Alpha and Omega: Desert of the Dead
by DariaAlpha
Summary: The dead have risen in Jasper, ravenous for living flesh. They're everywhere. All of Canada has gone to hell and the survivors must find a way out. The survivors of a wolf pack find such a way, but it crashes in a country just as infested as Canada. The crash survivors must survive a new, deadlier hell, all in a search for a new safe haven that could be in vain in the end.
1. A Wild Night at The Howling Rock

**Author's note #1:** This a remake of my story "Alpha and Omega: Undead Park - Part 1." The title "Desert of the Dead" may confuse people since Jasper Park is in Canada where there are no deserts, but the setting changes later in the story. While the tone of the story (dark, scary, horror-like) will be the same as it was in the original, as will how common death will be in this story, the type of zombies will be different. Anyone who has played the game SAS4 will understand the zombies more. It will be some mutations from that featured as the wolf zombies in this story. And it will be explained why there is wolf zombies in an African desert, where wolves don't exist.

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**Chapter 1**

**A Wild Night at the Howling Rock**

The Howling Rock was the name of a mountain at the border of the Eastern and Western Wolf Packs of Jasper National Park, Canada. Jasper Park was a nature reserve, known for its protection of wolves, a species that was almost extinct in many places in North America.

The Howling Rock was where all of the wolves from the three separate wolf packs—the Central, the Northern, and the Southern—went to howl with their mates. It was where many couples, old and new ones, mated, as well, because of all the box canyons around this special mountain. It offered all the privacy the mating couples needed. If another couple heard moaning coming from one of the box canyons, then they'd just find another one to mate in.

Several wolf couples were just arriving at The Howling Rock in this moment. The couple at the front of the line of wolf couples was Kate, a female Alpha wolf, and her Omega mate Humphrey. They were the former pack leaders who'd been succeeded by the couple behind them. Behind them were Princess, a Beta wolf, and Runt, an Omega, and the youngest son of Kate and Humphrey. Princess was once an Alpha wolf, from the rival pack in Banff National Park, who'd joined the Western Wolf Pack of Jasper after being driven away by her parents, King and Queen. She'd saved Runt from being killed by her own pack when he was only a puppy and she'd been enslaved for an entire year for it. Princess had been subjected to many beatings and being orally raped from the wolves of her former pack. She'd fallen in love and mated with Runt, and they were now the parents of three children—Terra, Danny, and Sam. Terra was named for her mother, whose childhood name had been Terra before her father, King, had renamed her Princess. Just as he'd renamed himself from his old name, Slash, to King. And Queen had renamed herself from a name no one could remember now.

Behind them were the other two children of Kate and Humphrey and their mates. First were Claudette and Fleet, both Alphas. Fleet was formerly of the Northern Wolf Pack, which he'd fled with his little sister Magril because of their abusive father, Nars, who was killed by the rogues from Banff in the battle with them over a year ago. Behind them were Stinky and Mica, also both Alphas. Mica was from the Southern Wolf Pack and she'd left for the same reasons Magril and Fleet had left the Northern Wolf Pack. She'd lived with an abusive father, but with a mother who'd loved her, but had been corrupted by her father into believing in arranged marriages. All of her siblings, all seventeen of them, had since run away from home, and married wolves they really loved. Still, Mica was the only one out of the eighteen who had become a mother. She had given birth to several puppies who were now adolescents.

But after only Mica had come to the Western Pack's Territory, a former rogue wolf from Banff National Park had suddenly arrived in Jasper Park. Her name was Princess and she told them not only about how she'd become a slave in Banff for her actions a year before her arrival in Jasper. An Omega wolf pup, at the time, called Runt had been taken to Banff and enslaved in a pack of only Alphas. Omegas were the lowest rank of wolf, while Betas were in the middle, and Alphas were the highest rank. The wolves in Banff believed that only Alphas had the right to live while the rest were scum. Their reason for pup napping Runt had been to draw his family away from Jasper and conquer their territory.

The rogues themselves had once been members of the Eastern Wolf Pack in Jasper but after an incident involving Kate, the low Alpha female of both the Eastern and Western Wolf Packs, which had united. Winston, Kate's father, and Tony, the former Eastern Alpha male, had arranged a marriage with Tony's son Garth, an Alpha, to unite the feuding packs. The two packs had been feuding over territory because the Eastern Pack Wolves had had no constant food source. Most of the caribou had lived in the Western Wolf Pack's territory and the Eastern Pack Wolves had wanted that entire herd of caribou for themselves. But, during the course of events of the several days after Kate had learned he must marry Garth, Kate and Humphrey, an Omega who loved Kate but hadn't been able to marry her due to pack law. There had once been a pack law regarding marriage—Alphas only married Alphas, Betas only married Betas, and Omegas only married Betas. After Kate and Humphrey had returned to Jasper Park, she'd agreed, at first, to marry Garth, despite the fact that she'd fallen in love with Humphrey, and her Omega sister Lilly had fallen in love with Garth. That had been against pack law, but none of the four then adolescent wolves had agreed with it but they'd been nervous to admit that until Kate had at her wedding.

But Tony had lost his mind because his son had fallen in love with an Omega—Lilly—and he'd declared war on the Western Pack Wolves. The brief fight between the packs had caused a caribou stampede that almost caused the deaths of Kate, Winston, and Tony. After the wolves had mourned Kate, when they'd thought she was dead, she woke up from being unconscious, and the feud between the packs had been put to an end. Kate and Humphrey were allowed to marry, as were Lilly and Garth. Winston and Eve, the Western leaders, and Tony retired from the roles as Alpha male and/or Alpha female of their pack with the unity of the packs. Kate and Humphrey became the Alpha female and the Alpha male, much to the anger of Garth. He believed that he should've become the Alpha male and that Lilly should've become the Alpha female. Lilly might be an Omega, but at least she was related to a family of Alphas by blood! Humphrey was an Omega and so had been every member of his family as far back as anyone could remember.

And that pack unity was why the rogues had gone rogue. But their plan to retake the united Eastern and Western Territories failed not because of the Jasper wolves' efforts but because of Princess, the only surviving child of King and Queen, the leaders of the Banff Pack. She'd had a change of heart and tried to run away from Banff with Runt, but had been caught by King. In a bloody conflict, involving Alphas and Betas from the Jasper Pack, Princess, and King, had both been heavily wounded. Princess had taken the worst of the injuries, almost having her throat torn out by her own father. If it hadn't been for a strong Beta wolf called Claws, and the Omegas Candy and Sweets, and Reba and Janice, Princess would've died.

But Princess hadn't agreed to join the Jasper Wolves because she'd wanted to know the fate of her father. That was the decision that made Princess's life pure Hell for the next year. Because she'd been seen by her father, who survived his injuries, King had ordered her to be enslaved for treason and he had his daughter stripped her of title of Alpha. She'd become an Omega and a slave, the worst combination of two things a wolf could be in a place like Banff, and had been the victim of brutal beatings and oral rape from the wolves of her pack. The males and the females had constantly beaten her. The reason the males had done it is she'd refused to perform oral sex on them and they'd beaten her until she couldn't think enough to refuse their wishes. After a while, she'd given up refusing their advances just to avoid another beating. She got so sick of the taste of their fluids and of their actions that when one take to her and had tried to perform oral on her, she'd castrated him and tore his throat out. That was an act which King had called "murder" and had exiled Princess for.

She'd made it all the way to Jasper after killing two rogues who had been sent to kill her where she'd reunited with Runt. The truth had been that she'd fallen in love with Runt immediately and the feeling had been mutual. But she'd drawn the line when Runt had asked her to perform oral on him. She wouldn't have been angry had it not been for what the males of her former pack had forced her to do for an entire year of her life. But she had made a bet with Runt regarding his sister's chances in The Great Wolf Games. Princess had said that if Claudette, an Alpha, won that race, she wouldn't do anything, but if she didn't come in first, Princess would give Runt what he wanted.

Princess's plan of getting out of giving another blowjob backfired when Claudette came in second behind Nars, the father of her mate Fleet and his sister Magril, both Alphas. Princess gave it to Runt, but she told him to not say anything about it or there would be Hell to pay. Shortly after this, Runt asked Princess to marry him, but right after the ceremony was over, they had been captured by rogues from Banff, and taken back to there to become slaves. They survived a brutal encounter with a massive rogue wolf in what they called "Blood Sports" before trying to dig their way out of the cave they'd been forced to stay in only to be figured out. Runt had seemingly died for Princess to escape, but he'd turned out to be alive after all, many days later before the final war with the rogues. That was a war in with both King and Queen were killed by the team of Princess, Runt, Melissa (a former rogue spy who betrayed King), and Lilly. Many of the other rogues had died when the pack had retreated right off a cliff that was many meters up in the air. Remarkably, there had been no deaths on the side of the Jasper wolves.

But Kate and Humphrey had had enough of leading the pack after that bloody war that had caused so many deaths—not that the rogues hadn't deserved it—that they'd said Princess and Runt would be the new pack leaders. They'd retired after this war at a young age for wolves and the entire pack had been shocked, but they were now used to the change, almost two years later. Princess and Runt had produced three puppies—Terra, Danny, and Sam. Claudette wasn't pregnant yet while Mica and Stinky had already produced a litter of eighteen who were now adults and had moved out to start their own families. Magril had yet to mate with her mate Liam, an Eastern Alpha.

But Claudette…she was changing that tonight…

"Oh yes, Fleet!" Claudette screamed in pleasure. "You're so big!"

Claudette was bouncing up-and-down on her mate, Fleet, in a box canyon near The Howling Rock, a special mountain to the north of the wolves' territory where wolves went to find mates. It was done by howling until they found a male or a female whose how matched perfectly with their own. That wasn't how Claudette and Fleet had fallen in love, though. They'd met as puppies when they'd competed in The Great Wolf Games against each other. His father, Nars, hadn't agreed with this because he'd thought it would affect his son's performance in the games. In the end, it had been a tie between the two, who had represented the Northern and Western/Eastern Wolf Packs. Because Nars had seen how much his son really loved Claudette, he'd had a change of heart, and had let them stay together. But that hadn't stopped him from being an abusive father until his pups were adolescents. They'd had enough of being physically and verbally abused by their father and had ran away from the Northern Territory to find a new home. They'd lived in Claudette's den, after Fleet married her, until Magril had met Liam, and moved to live with him.

"Oh, Claudette, don't ever stop riding me!" Fleet moaned. "I love it when you're on top of me!" Then he added, "Harder, Claudette! Ride me harder!" He couldn't stop moaning as she hopped up and down on him. "I love you so much! Please don't stop…ever!"

"Fleet!" Claudette screamed as she slammed her large body down on his crotch. Fleet screamed in pleasure at the same time. "Oh, Fleet, Fleet! Your dick is so big, but that isn't the only thing that's big!" Fleet already knew that Claudette could be vulgar during sex. He'd learned that the time he'd performed oral on her after she'd had a nightmare. "Your balls are big, too!" she added in a sexual voice. "I'll make sure I suck it later! I mean your dick, not your balls!"

This was the best sex, Fleet thought, they'd ever had. Better than when he'd mated with her from behind—when she hadn't been in heat, the only time a female wolf could get pregnant—or when they'd performed oral on each other at the same time, in a position called sixty-nine, which referred to when they did it at the same time. Fleet wished he'd let Claudette ride her every time they mated, whether she was in heat or not. This felt better than anything they'd done in the past, even all the times she'd blown him. He never would've thought letting the female half of a couple be dominant during sex would feel better than the female letting the male be dominant.

"Come on, Fleet," Claudette said. "You know I'm the dominant one in the relationship!" Fleet thought that she must've read his thoughts or something. And as if to prove she was the dominant one, Claudette slammed her heavy body down on his body so far that his entire dick when into her, and it caused them both to scream. Claudette screamed because of how good it felt but Fleet had screamed because of how much it hurt. She was slamming her overweight body on Fleet's most sensitive part of his body. Claudette weighed at least fifteen pounds more than Fleet, so it was easy to understand why it hurt when Claudette slammed herself down on _there_.

"You're so deep in my pussy!" Claudette moaned in a tremendously sexual tone. "I don't know how much more I can take!" And then it happened right after she began constantly repeating Fleet's name and saying, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I'm gonna…I'm gonna…ORGASSSSSSSMMMMMMMMM!" And then Claudette released her fluids all over Fleet's crotch in the most powerful orgasm of her life. She hadn't orgasmed that powerful in his face when he'd eaten her out for the first time.

"You're so wet Claudette!" Fleet complimented his mate as she hopped on his dick at a fast speed. "I love your pussy!" And that was true. He did love it, especially during that moment he'd eaten her out for the first time. Even more when they'd sixty-nined about a year ago because he'd had it in his face for fifteen minutes as she'd sucked his dick. Fleet loved Claudette's pussy as much as she loved his dick, that was clear.

"I'm always wet around you," she commented in a sleazy voice.

"Go faster than you did in the race!" Fleet cried with pleasure. "Hop on my dick faster than you ever ran during The Great Wolf Games!" The race Fleet was referring to was the one they'd competed against each other in as puppies. Claudette out kept again of Fleet for the entire race, even before he'd let her get ahead of him.

Claudette got an idea as she hopped up and down on Fleet. First, she put her front legs on his chest, pinning him to the ground. But he enjoyed that because it allowed Claudette to have even more control of him. She didn't take her paws off his chest as she pushed her hips up and down on him. But that wasn't the part of her idea that would really get to him. Fleet had just admitted that he wanted her to ride him faster and that gave her a good reason to tease her mate. She would have him begging for her to hope on his dick faster.

"Faster, huh?" Claudette taunted right after pounding his crotch by slamming her body down on it again. She was speaking in a cocky voice. "Well, seems like you're really enjoying yourself, big boy…" She slowed her speech down. "Why don't I just slow down?"

Fleet's eyes grew large as Claudette slowed down at the speed at which she thrusted her hips up and down on his dick. She was going so slow that Fleet's "grand finale," as she always called it, would take so much longer. And that shocked Fleet. He wanted to flood his mate's womb with his fluids as soon as possible and for them to both feel great before them. She'd have to hope as fast as she could to make him reach his "grand finale" as soon as possible. She wanted it, yes, and so did Fleet, but Claudette really loved being a tease, and teasing him, since she was in complete control. She could chose to hope on his dick for an hour straight or she could stop right now and suck him off instead! But Claudette knew very well that Fleet wanted to ejaculate in her pussy and get her pregnant, so that's what she would make him do eventually. But a little teasing of her true love never hurt.

"NO!" Fleet cried in a begging tone as she slowly raised her hips up and down against his own. He could still feel his dick going in and out of her pussy, but it was so slow that it would take him twice as long to ejaculate. "Please don't stop Claudette!" he started begging. "Go faster! Just please! Whatever you do don't stop!" He was almost in tears. "Don't stop riding me fast! I want to fill you to the brim with my cum! Please don't ever stop, I beg you…please…"

"Aw…" Claudette cooed at Fleet as if she were talking to a puppy. And that's how she would treat him since he had begged her to ride him as fast as she could. "Look whose begging!" She laughed. "It makes me look like the dominant one!" And to prove that, she slammed her heavier body down on his dick again, causing him to have an early release of fluids, which she-wolves called "pre cum." It usually meant that the male's climax was nearing, but wasn't quite there yet either.

Fleet realized how she wasn't being serious and decided to play along a bit. He relaxed then said, "I'm so lucky to have you as a mate. You're so very hot!" He was trying to flatter her. "Your pussy is so wet that your fluids are like a natural lube and it feels like your paw is around my dick like when you'd given me a pawjob!" Then he raised his voice with more pleasure it in. "Now hop on me like never before!"

"You'll get what you want, Fleet, and then some!" Claudette replied and began thrusting her hips against Fleet's hips faster than she ever had before in this moment. It was the first time she'd ever ridden Fleet and she wanted to make this the best fucking she'll ever give him until she rides him again! She wanted to make it better than all the blowjobs she'd given him, but that would be hard to do because she gave a mean one, probably the best any she-wolf in all of Jasper could give. She was absolutely great with her tongue and her mouth at making a male ejaculate. And she loved the taste of semen, even if it was very salty. It was worth it, she thought, to suck a male off for more than ten minutes as long as she got a large mouthful of semen in the end. And she always swallowed that load before licking it off Fleet's dick just to make him happy.

"I'm so wet!" Claudette blurted out. "I'm making wet sounds as I hop on your cock!"

And it was true. They both could hear the squishing sounds her pussy made as she lifted her body up and down on Fleet's dick. It was due to all the fluids her body had released during her powerful orgasm a few minutes earlier.

And Fleet wasn't done complimenting Claudette as she rode him more passionately than she sucked his dick at night. "You're one naughty girl…" he laughed and moaned at the same time. "Here…let me help you…" Fleet grabbed her large hips with his paws, being careful not to dig his claws into her flesh, and started guiding her along. Although she was riding him, it helped Claudette feel Fleet thrust his dick into her as she hopped on it.

"I can't wait for that cum to go in my womb!" Claudette admitted. "It makes me feel so warm inside! And it always made me feel so warm when you cummed in my mouth or all over my face! There's nothing better than a load of cum all over your face on a cold winter day, I tell you Fleet! It's even better in my pussy. And my mouth, above all!"

"I'm surprised my knot doesn't go in with how far you're going down on my dick…" Fleet said in just as sexual of a voice that Claudette had been talking to him in the entire time she'd been hopping on him. The knot was the tissue on a male wolf's dick that he forced into the female when he reached his breaking point during sex so the female couldn't get away until he'd released all of her fluids into her. It was so she would get pregnant for sure. But since Claudette was on top of Fleet and hopping on his dick, it was impossible for either of them to force his knot into her pussy. And that was a good thing since, if his knot was forced into a female who was riding him, it would be next to impossible to get his knot out again. They would be together forever in a way that no one couple wanted to be.

As soon as Claudette picked up the speed at which she rode Fleet, he began gasping with anxiousness. He could feel his "grand finale" building help and Claudette knew why he was acting so anxious all of a sudden. "You're gonna flood my womb with your special sauce aren't you?" she asked in the most sexual voice a she-wolf could ever talk in. That voice turned Fleet on almost as much as Claudette hopping up and down on his dick did.

"I'm so lucky to be your mate!" Fleet screamed in pleasure. Oh, Claudette, I can't take it anymore! I'm gonna cum!" He raised his voice even higher. It was like Claudette's voice when she'd orgasmed all over his crotch. "I'm gonna…oh yes! I'm CUUUMMMMMING!"

Fleet buckled his hips at the same moment Claudette had slammed her hips down on his crotch. She kept her body in a position that forced his entire dick into her pussy, his knot excluded, so she would get all of his semen. But there was so much that it was leaking out around Fleet's dick and getting all over his crotch.

"Yes!" Claudette screamed. "Oh, yes, yes! Oh, yes, shit! Your cum is coating my pink pussy white…" She couldn't take the pleasure anymore and let herself fall down on top of Fleet. Luckily, he got his front legs out from her underneath her just before her breast collided with his chest. He let out an oomph sound as his fifteen pounds heavier mate fell down on top of him.

"Oh, you were great!" Fleet complimented her as he breathed heavily. She was breathing just as heavily as she ran her tongue across his muzzle briefly. She was thanking him for getting her pregnant and letting her be in complete control (except for when he'd grabbed her butt and thrusted into her, but she hadn't minded that. That had made the fact feel so much better than it would've otherwise). "I've never released that much cum in you before…" He didn't want to talk, knowing they were both in so much pleasure.

They could hear moaning from box canyons all over The Howling Rock. They swore they could hear Humphrey, Claudette's father and Fleet's father-in-law, begging Kate to suck his dick harder. Then the scream that followed told them that he'd just had a "grand finale" in Kate's mouth. Such as the case when they heard Garth yelling the same thing as he did the same in Lilly's mouth. Then Claws was moaning as Scar, her Beta mate, yelled about "cumming in her" like it was his job. They could tell by Claws's screaming that he was giving her anal. So many wolves were making love on this night in the middle of mating season. And those females who already were pregnant were giving mean blowjobs right now. Magril, Fleet's sister, wasn't pregnant, but they could hear that Liam was enjoying the end of the first one she'd ever given him. And so was Stinky, from his Alpha mate Mica, and Runt enjoying his climax after being ridden by Princess. They heard him yelling that his thanks for being ridden, just as Fleet had to Claudette.

They didn't recognize any other voices, but they could hear many males or females shouting all sorts of sex-related things.

"I love you so much, Fleet," Claudette moaned as she lay on top of him, "and we'll always be safe together. Nothing will separate us or drive us from Jasper Park as long as we're alive…"

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**Author's note #2:** If anyone wonders why I began the story with a sex scene between Claudette and Fleet, that's because there is only one out there between them and that story isn't that great. So I made up for it. And it was kinda odd to have them mate as puppies since they won't know such things. (No offense intended to who wrote that, if you happen to read this, but I'm not going to lie about anything. That's also the realist in me thinking. I like things to be as realistic as possible, even in a zombie story.) But putting that aside, this chapter is a reference to the ending of the original/beginning of the sequel. Only I didn't copy-and-paste it from those like I did before to show it picked up where the original left off.

There will be references to the original in this story even though this is a remake. And the sex scenes will not be as common as in my story _Alpha and Omega: The Legend of the Saw-Toothed Cave_. That is my least favorite A&O fanfic I've ever written, partially because it was about demons, and how I'd executed the old plot for A&O4. I could've done so much better with that story. But it doesn't matter since I'm not doing another demon or vampire story. I'm gonna stick to zombies since that is what I'm best at when I write A&O horror stories._  
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This will be rated M for bloody violence/gore, language, and sexual content. I'm warning people now. If you don't like that and possibly deaths of characters you are connected to (Stinky, Kate, Humphrey, Fleet, etc) don't read this story. I'm not saying they'll die, but those characters have died in my stories in the past. I'm not afraid to kill anyone off in my stories. Don't like it? Don't read.


	2. Fun in the Snow

**Chapter 2**

**Fun in the Snow**

Winter. The winter after that wild night at The Howling Rock only two weeks earlier. Claudette was pregnant and resting in her den as the other puppies and pre-adolescent wolves of her pack played in the snow. She was watching them wishing she could be out there but she was sick. She'd played in the snow yesterday and had caught a cold because of doing that. Obviously, she wasn't the kind of wolf who should be playing in the snow if she got this sick so easily. She was constantly sneezing and coughing, and occasionally, she would vomit.

Princess and Runt were playing with their puppies from the last litter. Well, they couldn't be called puppies anymore. They were adolescents and had started taking an interest in wolves of the opposite gender. Terra, the oldest, who was named for their mother's birth name, had taken an interest in a male Alpha called Aron, despite being stalked by a perverted Omega wolf called Jorel. He was so obsessed with Princess and Runt's oldest daughter that he'd masturbated to her from a bush when no one else had been in the area. She'd found him just as he'd "climaxed" all over his hand, moaning her name. And she'd urinated on him for it, calling him a stupid fool. To urinate on a wolf, especially one who ranked lower, was the ultimate showing of disrespect. And Terra, the Alpha daughter of her former Alpha, now Beta, mother Princess, greatly outranked Jorel, who was just an Omega. They were at opposite ends of the social ranking, even though there was nothing that could stop them from marrying. But what he'd done was more than just loving Terra. It was wrong, sick, perverted, immature…there was an endless amount of things Terra had called him. And not to mention it was sexual harassment since Terra had caught him doing it before. And she'd told her parents, the pack leaders, about it. Well, in the end there was Hell to pay for Jorel and his parents. Mostly his parents because Princess and Runt had thought they could've done better in raising Jorel.

Princess had told them, "Your son shouldn't be jacking off to my daughter from bushes! How would one of your daughters feel if my sons, Danny and Sam, did that to one of them from bushes and any of your daughters caught them with semen all over one of my sons' paw?" Jorel's parents had said in anything, they had been so shocked.

And Runt had barked, "Exactly! Now do something to discipline your son. If we hear from about this from Terra, again…we'll discipline Jorel ourselves. And you won't like it!" That had been the end of that meeting between Terra's parents and Jorel's parents.

Then there was Danny, also an Alpha, and the second oldest of the litter. He probably had the least dirtiest mind of the three puppies. Terra loved giving head and Sam loved getting it (not from his own sister, of course), but Danny was the kind of wolf who would wait until he was married before he would have any sort of sexual relationship with another wolf (of the opposite sex). Terra was still single, but she was madly in love with the Alpha known as Aron, while Sam was dating Gemma. Gemma was an Omega wolf from the Southern Wolf Pack, like Mica, who was orphaned when her parents were killed in a caribou stampede. No one had wanted to adopt Gemma other than Reba and Janice, two Omega vegetarian wolves from the Western Wolf Pack. Danny had never had any form of sexual contact with a female wolf. And he intended to never until he was married.

Lastly, there was Sam, the only Omega put of the litter, and the youngest of Princess and Runt's litter. While Terra and Danny were born within seconds of each other, Sam had been born half an hour after his hold siblings. And he was also the horniest of the three. He was another Candy, a horny Omega wolf of the Western Wolf Pack who used to always have a sexual relationship with Mooch until her oldest friend, Sweets, also an Omega, almost died in the war with Banff. That war had changed Candy and made her a more serious wolf than she ever had been before. But Sam hadn't come close to experiencing such a loss so he wouldn't stop accepting blowjobs from Gemma, who enjoyed giving them almost more than Sam enjoyed getting them. She loved what Sam's dick and fluids tasted like. And she enjoyed giving head no matter how it was done, whether in the normal fashion, in the sixty-nine position, face fucking, or deep throating. But just a normal blowjob was how they both preferred it because Sam had the option of ejaculating in Gemma's mouth and she had the choice of tasting his salty fluids. Jokingly, she always called them the sweetest fluid she'd ever tasted in her life.

Princess and Runt weren't the only wolves in the clearing between all the wolf dens. There were also the couples of Kate and Humphrey, Stinky and Mica, Claws and Scar, Lilly and Garth, and Melissa and Hutch. Melissa was a former rogue Alpha from Banff who'd betrayed King and Queen, and Hutch was a Beta wolf of the Western Wolf Pack whom she'd married after the war had ended. They'd fallen in love after Hutch had saved her from being killed by two rogue males. Stinky was the only Alpha son of Kate and Humphrey and the loving mate of Mica, a former Southern Pack Alpha who was now a member of the Western Wolf Pack.

Mica had a shocking past that only her best and oldest friend Scarlet, a Western Alpha, knew about. When she'd been trapped in a den with only Scarlet during the winter she'd gone to Alpha school, Mica and Scarlet had had a rather dirty conversation. It had been about what getting eaten out could've felt like for them, then about what getting a facial—semen on the face—could possibly feel like. And then Mica had asked Scarlet if they could perform oral on each other to see what it felt like. It had started with Mica putting her head between Scarlet's legs but had led to them doing it in the sixty-nine position until they'd both orgasmed on each other's faces. They weren't lesbian, obviously, since they'd married and gotten pregnant with different male wolves as adults. They'd been nothing more than curious adolescent wolves who'd wanted to know the pleasures of oral and what pussies tasted like. And now that they had mates, they knew what dick tasted like and what getting a facial felt like. Stinky had given Mica a facial after the second blowjob she'd given him just as Scarlet's mate had given her a facial after the first blowjob she'd ever given her mate or anyone. Mica was the first wolf Scarlet had ever gotten sexual with and Scarlet was the first wolf Mica had gotten sexual with. Not even their mates knew of this encounter and they'd promised to never tell anyone unless it was their mates who'd promised they could talk about anything, no matter how awkward of a subject it was.

Things had been so peaceful ever since the rogues had been defeated years earlier. And the wolves of Jasper hoped it would always be that way forever. They hadn't seen a rogue in Jasper other than Princess and Melissa since the war had come to an end. And they hoped it would always be that way. The rogues, the evil ones, weren't welcome in Banff and never would be. If any were seen in Jasper, they would be killed immediately if they seemed suspicious or weren't here to truly join them like Princess and Melissa had been. This had never happened, but they had a good plan in mind for any rogue who was ever seen in Jasper. Claws had once been sent to dispatch a rogue wolf, before the war with Banff, even more she'd married Scar. He was a rogue male called Rider. Claws had ridden him since she hadn't been in heat at the time before giving him a brief pawjob before blowing up. After he'd had his finale in her mouth, she'd bitten his dick off, spit it out, and then brutally mutilated Rider after she'd thoroughly gained his trust. She'd puked his fluids up because the rogues were cannibals and she didn't want such a foul-tasting fluid in her stomach. And that was the last time she'd acted as a hit man…rather, hit she-wolf…because of what she'd had to do to convince that rogue. She'd never had so much trouble with killing an enemy of the pack in her life and didn't want to have that kind of trouble again. Just like no one knew of Mica and Scarlet's encounter many years ago, no one knew that Claws had done what she did to that rogue. And she intended to keep it that way, especially with Scar. She was loyal to him, as a mate, and couldn't let him know that she'd used sex to kill a rogue. He would kill over if he knew she'd fucked and given head to a rogue from Banff. Of course, Claws was a good wolf at heart. It was the best wolves who had the darkest pasts.

Princess was a perfect example because of her life growing up in Banff when she had been loyal to her sadistic parents. She regretted ever being loyal to King and Queen so much that she even refused to call them her parents or use the terms 'mother' and 'father' in reference to them. Any similar word would _never_ slip her mother about her parents. Not even in the most vulgar of fashion. She wouldn't call them such even if she was condemning them to hell and cursing them up and down like they deserved. She knew that King and Queen were burning in Hell for what they'd died. But she knew that she wouldn't because she'd seen heaven during her near-death experience after the battle between Jasper and Banff that had been fought over Runt, who was now her mate and father of three children.

"Get back here, Aron!" The young she-wolf barked playfully as she chased the male around. It was Terra and she was chasing her true love, Aron, around. Terra looked exactly like her mother, Princess, only smaller in stature and with amber eyes rather than brown eyes. She also had smaller ears than her mother. They were more like Runt's eyes than Princess's ears.

Terra ran across the deep snow and tackled area. They both disappeared immediately and Aron reappeared just as quickly as they'd both vanished. Terra's head popped up a minute later in an awkward spot. It was between Aron's legs and the teeth she in her muzzle made him nervous. For a wolf her age, Terra had exceptionally large teeth. He almost pictured getting sterilized by them rather than blown by Terra just because of how large her teeth were. Terra sensed Aron's fear and gnashed her jaws just to scare him. He pictured something sensitive being between her teeth as she gnashed them and screamed like a little puppy before running off.

Terra laughed, pulled her head back in the snow, then popped out of the snow with an explosion of white and took off after Aron, barking like a mad dog. He was afraid of her know that she'd gnashed her teeth at his crotch. He'd never want to put anything in her mouth, whether it been what she'd pretended to bite, his paw, or anything. He was terrified of her teeth and her mouth now. He wouldn't even get close enough to Terra's muzzle to kiss her!

"Get back here!" she yipped. "I won't bite…hard!"

"No!" Aron almost screamed. "Get away! Just get away!"

Although they were both Alphas, Terra was the faster of the two. She easily caught up with Aron and tackled him into the less deep part of the snow. She pinned him to the ground with her front legs and used the weight of her hips to hold him down at his hips. He wouldn't get away. Not only was Terra stronger than Aron. She also weighed more than he did.

"You really strong you'd get away from me?" Terra laughed. "Who's the better Alpha? Say 'You are' and I'll let you go."

"You are! You are!" Aron cried. "You're the better Alpha! You always have been! Now please, just let me go! I don't want anywhere near your teeth!"

Terra laughed. "What, have you developed a fear of teeth now?" She gnashed her teeth again just to share him before letting him go. He took off faster than a rabbit could run, yelping like a coyote.

Although there was nothing too serious going on with the pups, elsewhere a serious situation was unfolding not far away with the adult wolves. A few had fallen ill suddenly—seemingly just overnight—and were at death's door already. Eve, the mother of Kate and Lilly, was still the leader of the pack healers even though she'd retired as Alpha female and her mate Winston had retired as the teacher of Alpha school. Garth, Lilly's mate, had replaced Winston as the teacher of Alpha school. He'd taught Mica and her best friend Scarlet when they'd been there. The other pack healers were the Omega wolves Candy and Sweets, and the Omega vegetarians Reba and Janice. Reba and Janice had known each other since their puppy days when they'd been orphaned in Banff years before King and Queen had been the leaders. Candy, Sweets, and a Beta wolf called Hutch were also orphans from Banff. Reba and Janice were the adoptive mothers of the Omega runt Gemma. Gemma was the young she-wolf who was dating Princess and Runt's youngest pup Sam. Although Sam's parents had known they were dating for as long as they had, they'd been shocked to find Gemma blowing Sam a few days ago in their den. They'd gone away for about fifteen minutes and had come back to find Gemma with her head between Sam's legs with a mouthful of his fluids.

But these she-wolves weren't thinking about their pasts now because the three dying wolves were their mates. Candy was crying over the catatonic body of Mooch, her Omega mate. Sweets was crying over body of Salty, also an Omega. Lastly, there was Janice. She was crying over the body of Shakey, another Omega. They were all members of the Western Wolf Pack, including Eve and Gemma. Gemma was formerly a member of the Southern Wolf Pack, though, but she'd become a Western Pack Wolf after being found as naked—newborn—wolf pup by Reba and Janice. Shakey was their adoptive father and she was in tears over his body, being held by Reba. All of the wolves in the healers' den were wearing leaf "masks" over their muzzles to keep their mouths and noses covered. They didn't know if this illness was contagious in an airborne way. They weren't worn about fluidic contact since they didn't have any open wounds and it wouldn't get in their mouths or eyes.

Eve was horrified by this sudden event of three wolves dying. She knew that three widows would be made soon. Those females she feared would become widows were Candy, Sweets, and Janice. She knew that Salty, Shakey, and Mooch wouldn't be breathing—wouldn't be alive—in half an hour. And Gemma would be without a father again—and this time she would know that her father died. It didn't matter that Shakey was her father only by adoption. She still loved him as if he and Janice were the ones who had brought her into existence. It would kill them all when these three dying Omegas slipped away. Eve knew it and it pained her to know that she couldn't do anything to save them.

_But where did this illness come from so suddenly?_ Eve wondered. _They weren't sick yesterday...maybe it has to do with the bites they were nursing yesterday morning. But what does it mean?_

* * *

**Author's note #3:** I'm sure readers will know the answer to Eve's questions.


	3. Sick Wolves

**Chapter 3**

**Sick Wolves**

"Oh Shakey," Janice moaned miserably.

"Why Salty?" Sweets wailed.

"How could this happen to Mooch?" Candy cried. "How could this happen to our mates when we're pregnant?!"

"How will we possibly raise our puppies without their fathers?!" Sweets almost screamed.

"I-I can help you all," Gemma stammered. She was in tears for her adoptive father Shakey, the mate of her adoptive mother Janice, as well as for the mates of Candy and Sweets.

"What the hell can you do?" Candy growled at the adolescent runt Omega. "You're only an adolescent and a runt!" She normally never talked to other wolves like this but Gemma didn't take offense at this statement. Not only did Gemma know it was true about her being a runt, she also knew that no would acted normal when his or her mate was dying before his or her eyes. Candy was normally a sweet wolf—living up to her name, even though it was short for Candice. So was Sweets. That was why she'd named herself "Sweets" after arriving in Jasper with Candy, Reba, Janice, Hutch, and Candu as orphaned pups. They'd all been orphaned after the former leaders of Banff—long before King and Queen had taken over—had heard rumors that the parents of these six wolves were plotting to kill them. It hadn't been true, but the former pack leaders had ordered them to be executed. The wolves who'd carried the task out had left all the orphans alive, and alone, to die naturally. But they'd all survived and met the wolves who'd become their best friends. Candy had met Sweets, Reba had met Janice, and Hutch had met Candu. This event in their lives was why Reba and Janice were vegetarians. Reba and Janice had survived by eating any plants they could find, while the others had survived on insects, small rodents, and any other animals that wolf pups could catch without any trouble.

In less than a minute after exploding, Candy felt bad about what she'd said and started apologizing to Gemma. "I'm sorry that I snapped at you," she said. "It's just…"

"I know," Gemma said. "You don't need to explain—I get why you snapped. And it's true. I am a runt. That's why no one had wanted to adopt me as a puppy until Reba, Janice and Shakey heard about me."

The wolves who were in the den with Salty, Shakey, and Mooch, as the three lay there dying, were still wearing the leaves over their muzzles because they feared the infection could be airborne. They were think leaves with powerful vines. Eve was sure it made good enough masks to prevent any hazards from being breathed in by the five wolves, herself included, were wearing them. Eve was enough of a genius about illnesses and healing to know how to prevent it from spreading if it was airborne in the healing done. But she really doubted that it was airborne for one reason. There weren't any wolves other than Salty, Shakey, and Mooch who were ill. She assumed it had something to do with the bites on their shoulders and nothing but that. And she hoped it wouldn't go beyond these three dying Omegas. They didn't need any more death.

Eve was sure that these three would be dead soon. They'd been this away for almost an entire day and she didn't see them lasting much longer given the condition they were in. They were in comas and had lost all control of their bodily functions, including their hearts and brains. Eve and Candy, her assistant, had checked their vitals. They'd failed to find their heartbeat or pulse. And they weren't talking or moving, so that told them that they were "brain dead," too. And all of that together made them official dead. But yet they hadn't expired yet because they were still breathing shallowly. So shallowly, so briefly, that each of the "nurse" wolves thought that each of their breaths would be the last. And for Salty, it proved to be. His chest rose and fell one last time then his breathing stopped all together. Shakey, a small wolf, died only seconds later and Mooch died less than a minute after his friends did.

Candy, Sweets, and Janice started screaming and wailing miserably. They'd been with their mates for the last twenty-four hours, awake and asleep, so they'd witnessed their declining health. And now they'd witnessed the deaths of their unborn puppies' fathers. How could things get any worse? None of the now widowed she-wolves could imagine things being any worse. They'd lost their mates after watching them slowly die because some unknown disease and now they'd witnessed their deaths. The only good thing was that they'd died quickly and didn't suffer. But that did very little to cheer Candy, Sweets, and Janice up. They were wailing loudly and shedding tears larger than any they'd ever shed in their lives. It took all the self-control they had just to not cry over their mates' bodies. They didn't know if physical contact with them could cause them to be infected as well. And they didn't want to meet the same gruesome fate as their mates had so suddenly.

As Gemma and Reba confronted Candy, Sweets, and Janice, Eve went over to their mates' lifeless bodies to examine the bites on their shoulders. She'd never seen wounds clot so quickly as theirs had about a day ago. Soon as they'd found her, all three of their bites—that is, each single bite on each wolf—had almost immediately, and quickly, clotted. She'd never seen any of the symptoms they'd experienced before, so she'd used a bird feather and an ink made by Reba and Janice using black berries to write them done in a large piece of tree bark. The timetable Eve had written read something like this:

**Hour 1:** Pain and discoloration (brown-purple) of the infected area. Immediate clotting of the wound (provided the infection came from a wound).

**Hour 5:** Fever (99-103 degrees F), chills, slight dementia, vomiting, acute pain in the joints.

**Hour 8:** Numbing of extremities and the infected area, increased fever (103-106 degrees F), increased dementia, loss of muscular coordination.

**Hour 11: **Paralysis in the lower body , overall numbness, slowed heart rate.

**Hour 16: **Coma.

**Hour 20:** Heart stoppage. Zero brain activity.

But what happened next was entirely unexpected. Their bodies began moving as if they were alive again. The she-wolves were horrified, obviously, and they all backed off to the mouth of the den. Janice had screamed for someone to come see this and three she-wolves came running into the den immediately. It was Princess, Claws, and Melissa. They arrived just as Salty, Shakey, and Mooch got up from their deathbeds and began moving at a shambling pace toward them. Their fur was gray-colored, their eyes lacking all color, moaning incoherently, and moving much slower than anything these living wolves had ever seen in their lives.

"Holy fucking…" Claws began.

"…shit!" Princess finished her good friend's sentence when the seemingly undead wolves attacked them. There was a frenzy of she-wolves screaming, fighting, and cursing before there were three massive sprays of blood and the sound of bones cracking under the force of…


	4. Mica Gets Some Bad News

**Chapter 4**

**Mica Gets Some Bad News**

"What…the…fuck…happened…to…them?!" Claws said in an extremely slow voice. She was breathing heavily, almost out of breath, because of what she'd just done with the help of Princess and Melissa. They'd used one of the large stones in the cave to smash the skulls of Salty, Shakey, and Mooch beyond recognition. They hadn't known that crushing their skulls would immediately kill them. They'd acted on pure instinct, not knowledge of the danger, when they'd crushed their friends' skulls. Any thinking animal instantly went for the head or the throat when in danger and that was what they'd done after Salty, Shakey, and Mooch had come to life after seemingly dying.

Thankfully, no one had been wounded because these she-wolves, Eve especially, feared that whatever virus had infected Salty, Shakey, and Mooch was spread through fluidic contact. Or when someone was wounded by a carrier of the virus. In this case, if Salty, Shakey, or Mooch had wounded any of these she-wolves, then they could've been infected as well. And every one of them knew it, too. And after what they'd witnessed, there was no way in Hell they'd let themselves get infected with that! It was a death sentence. Eve was, as she shook in terror, thinking about how she'd have to add another bit of information to her timetable about this disease. Now that, she was sure, it was safe to be near Salty, Shakey, and Mooch, as long as she didn't come into fluidic contact with them in a way that could infect her, Eve hoped she'd be able to find out something that could prevent this from happening to anyone else. She hoped she'd be able to find a cure to this before it spread any further. So far, no one else had shown signs of this illness that she knew of. Nor had anyone been seen with bites on them like the ones that had been found Salty, Shakey, and Mooch's shoulders. That gave Eve and the others a reason to be optimistic about the situation rather than to worry about it. Sure, Candy, Sweets, and Janice were all now pregnant widows but it was good to know that no one else would share the fate of their mates.

Even if no one else would die so horribly like their mates had, it didn't make Candy, Sweets, and Janice feel any better about what happened to their mates in the past twenty-four hours before their deaths. And then there was what had been done to them when they'd seemingly returned to life—something that made no sense to anyone in this cave. They'd never seen such a thing happen before—and they hoped they never saw it happen again! No one deserved to die in such a terrible way. Not even Princess and Claws, both she-wolves who hated the rogues so much that they'd want to go to Hell just to see them burn, would wish such a horrible fate on the rogue wolves from Banff National Park. It had to be a really bad fate for them to not wish it on wolves whom they hated as much as they hated the rogues from Banff. Princess had been tortured and raped by them for an entire year of their life and Claws had almost lost her mate to them, as had Princess. And Claws was the she-wolf who'd brutally slaughtered a rogue called Rider many years ago, even before she'd married Scar. Her brutality had included biting his dick off after blowing him—only to gain his trust, not because she'd wanted to do that or that she'd enjoyed doing it—before tearing out his throat, stomach, and intestines.

"I-I'm sorry about your mates," Princess said in a sad voice. "I truly am."

"And I'm sorry that we had to do what we did," Claws said, "but they would've killed Gemma and Eve if we hadn't. And we can't let this infection spread. But I fear that Salty, Shakey, and Mooch aren't the first carriers. They've got bites on their shoulders so they had to have been infected by someone else carrying the…what should we even call it…a virus?"

"I guess," Melissa said sourly.

"But more concerning is what they acted like…" Claws said slowly. "You all know what I'm about to stay. They acted just like zombies!"

"What?!" That gasp came from everyone in the cave but Claws.

"You know what I'm talking about," Claws spat. "The walking dead, undead...zombies! What else could they have been? And what else could be spreading this virus? I can't think of another explanation!"

"I can," Eve said.

"What?" Claws growled.

"Rabies," she said. Claws's jaw hit the floor of the cave at that, she was so shocked. "They were infected by some odd strain of rabies. I've seen it make wolves act like what you call 'zombies' before. It's a reasonable explanation and I'm sure that you all agree with it."

The truth was that none of them could believe it was rabies or any disease they'd ever heard of. They'd seen many forms of rabies before and none of them made wolves or any other animal act so aggressively, and strangely, like Salty, Shakey, and Mooch had. And none of them were more vocal about their disagreement about it being rabies than Claws was.

"It's not a reasonable explanation!" she snapped. "It's bullshit! Fucking bullshit! And you know it, Eve! If you believe that, you're a fool. A fool who makes me wonder how the fuck you became the pack healer?! If you actually believe it is rabies and not zombies, whoever made the decision to have you be the pack healer must've been fucking wasted on fermented berries when he or she did it!"

Eve was shocked and she was the kind of she-wolf who constantly said all sorts of crazy things, including axe crazy things such as "I will personally RIP out your eyes and SHOVE them down your throat so you can see me TEAR YOUR CARCASS OPEN!" But she'd never said anything as vulgar as what Claws or Princess normally said. Princess had once scared Runt, her Omega mate, so badly that he'd froze against a tree with fear. That was before she'd given him oral to make up for it. Of course, she'd seen the rotting faces of her dead parents, King and Queen, in the tree behind the one Runt had been lying up against. But she'd been distracted by his sudden ejaculation in her mouth, briefly, and when she'd looked back the faces had been gone. She always had nightmares, visions, flashbacks, and saw things related to Banff. She had the worst case of post-traumatic stress disorder ever seen in Jasper Park all because of a pack of wolves who were fucked up in the head. She always had to have Runt—or their three puppies, Terra, Danny, and Sam—by her side when she slept or she would flip shit and start screaming and crying about seeing her dead parents. She saw their faces many times when she closed her eyes, whether it was during the day or at night when she was trying to sleep.

"Claws," Princess said, "you need to calm down a bit. I know for a fact it's not rabies—I agree with you about it being zombies—but there's no reason for you to talk to Eve like that. If you were in her position, you would've said the same thing. Listen to me, as a friend, not as your Alpha female. I fear that you're right about it being zombies but you don't need to curse at Eve because she doubts us. I hope she's right about it being a new strain of rabies but I also fear that she's wrong…dead wrong. I say dead wrong because I fear that many of us will end up dead very soon…"

* * *

Elsewhere, things weren't going to go well for a former Southern Pack Alpha wolf called Mica. She and her Alpha mate Stinky didn't know about what was going in the den of the pack healers. No one outside the she-wolves in that den knew about what had happened there. But the news Mica was getting was so much worse than what those females had witnessed. And it could be related to what Princess feared was the start of a zombie outbreak.

Hutch and Candu, two Western Pack Beta Wolves, had been sent to the Southern Wolf Pack's Territory with Scar, another Beta, and many other Eastern and Western Betas and Alphas to find out why they hadn't seen or heard from Southern Pack Wolves in over three months. They'd discovered something absolutely horrifying and were telling Stinky and Mica about it right now.

"Mica," Hutch said nervously, trying to think of the best way he could break this news to her.

"Yes?" the gray she-wolf asked him. "Is something wrong?" She noticed how nervously he'd said her name. Hutch's voice was shaking.

"Yes," he said. "Something is really wrong. I mean _really_ wrong!"

"What happened?" Mica was beginning to worry. She was well aware of how her new pack hadn't heard from her former pack—the one she was born in—in three months. Everyone was well aware of that. But not many knew what Hutch was about to tell her. She was worried not about her father Griffin—that fuckin' asshole who'd treated her like shit—but her mother Banja whom she still deeply loved despite the mistakes her mother had made in the past. She'd only made those mistakes because she'd been too afraid to confront Griffin. Banja secretly hated her cruel mate for how he'd treated all of their children. Griffin was why they'd all ran away from home. He'd believed that parents should always arrange for who their puppies should marry. Banja thought that custom was nothing more than bullshit and that her mate was nothing more than a fucking dickwad who deserved to burn in Hell with those fucking rogues from Banff.

"Candu, Scar, a few others, and I went to the Southern Territory to try to find out why we hadn't heard from your pack in a while," Hutch explained, "and we found them."

"So they're alright?" Mica asked nervously, cocking her head.

"No…" Hutch said nervously. "We found your entire pack...dead…torn to shreds and scattered all over their territory. There wasn't a single survivor that we could find. Everyone there is dead…"

"I'm sorry to tell you this," Scar said, "but the first bodies we found were of your parents Griffin and Banja…there was nothing left of them but skeletons and gore…"

Before he could finish, Mica let out a scream. A scream louder than any she'd ever let out in her life. She'd never screamed that loud when she'd been staring death in the face during that caribou stampede years ago. And she'd never screamed like this when the rogues had been attacking Jasper. She wailed as she fell to the ground in tears.


	5. Soldiers in Jasper

**Chapter 5**

**Soldiers in Jasper**

Kate and Humphrey were woke up by an unpleasant sound outside their den atop the hill of dens. They ran out of their den to not only see that many wolves from surrounding dens, including their three children Claudette, Stinky, and Runt, and their mates, but some large vehicles moving through the territory. Some of the Beta wolves, including Claws and Scar, were barking at the humans on top of these large vehicles but they paid no heed to the wolves. They had more urgent things to worry about, if that phone call from the park rangers was about what they thought it was.

They were either aboard massive tanks or inside the trucks following them. Not that any of these wolves knew it, but these humans were members of the United States Army. The Canadian Army was busy dealing with similar situations all over the country and they'd needed back up. So the United States had been willing to help their neighboring allied country. And this wouldn't be the first time the United States Army had dealt with what they feared was another zombie outbreak. In August of 1968, a probe that orbited Venus returned to Earth, contaminated with a mysterious radiation, but it had been destroyed before getting through the atmosphere. Although this was stated as fact by the President of the United States, it was never revealed what really brought the dead back to life, whether it had been a virus or of supernatural sources. The first recorded "present day" zombie outbreak took place from August 31, 1968 to September of 1968. It had been in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as had the second outbreak, on a massive scale, that had taken place from October 1968 to November 1973. Millions of humans had been killed by the zombies, or turned into zombies themselves, before a massive "uprising" of humans, military and nonmilitary, led to the destruction of all the zombies in the United States, as well as Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, and all over the world. All those militaries had hoped such an outbreak would never happen again but it seemed to be now, here in Jasper Park, Canada, and it was beginning with the wolves rather than a few humans in a cemetery.

The United States Military hoped they could work with the Canadian Military to quell this possibly zombie outbreak before it gets much worse. If it got to the level of the 1968 to 1973 outbreak, would they be able to stop all the zombies again? That had been a hellish time for not just North America but the entire world. There had also been an outbreak in an African village, near a desert, during that time frame of the first present-day outbreak. There had been no survivors from the village, including a United States soldier who'd ended up in Africa when his plane had crashed, so the South African military had bombed the village and the surrounding area to ensure all the zombies were destroyed. They were successful then and there hadn't been a zombie outbreak in that area sense.

Although these were the earliest of the present day zombie outbreaks, they stretched back for thousands of years. Tens of thousands of years. The first _recorded_ zombie outbreak in history came from 60,000 BC from the region known as Katanda in Central Africa. A cave on the banks of the Upper Semliki River. It had contained thirteen crushed human skulls. Near them had been a pile of ashes. Analysis in a laboratory had determined the ash remains to be that of thirteen humans. In a cave that was still open to the public today, there was a painting of a human figure with its arms raised a threatening posture, eyes fixed in an evil gaze, and in the mouth, the body of another human. Although some people hadn't accepted this as an actual zombie outbreak due to the lack of proof and the time gap between in and the one that had followed.

The second known zombie outbreak in history happened in the year 3,000 B.C. in Hieraconpolis, Egypt. British diggers, in the year 1892, had unearthed a nondescript tomb. They'd found no clues about who the person the tomb had been made for or what his place in Egyptian Society had been. The man's body had been found outside the open crypt of his tomb, curled up in a corner and only partially decomposed. Thousands of scratch marks had been all over every surface of the tomb, as if the man had tried to claw his way out. Forensic experts of the time had determined that the scratches had been made over a period of several years. The body of the ancient Egyptian had several bite marks on the right radius of his skull and the teeth matched those of human. The autopsy done on the corpse had revealed that the man's dried and partially decomposed brain was infected by an odd virus that had come to be known as "Solanum," or the zombie virus. The frontal lobe of this man's brain was entirely melted away. Lastly, this case led to speculation about why later Egyptian specialists always removed the brains from their mummies.

Many followed after this outbreak, in places such as the coast of Africa in 500 BC, Afghanistan in 329 BC, China in 212 BC, Roman territory from 121 AD to 177 AD, Northern Holland in 700 AD, Northern Germany in 850 AD, Jerusalem in 1073 AD, Greenland in 1250 AD, China in 1281 AD, and then a more well-known outbreak in Oaxaca, Mexico in the year 1523 AD.

This letter written by a Spanish priest called Father Esteban Negron says the following: "The natives tell of a sickness that darkens the soul, causing a thirst for the blood of their brothers. They tell of men, women, even children whose flesh have become gray with rot and possess an unholy smell. Once darkened, there is no method of healing, save death, and that can only be achieved through fire, since the body becomes resistant to all arms of man. I believe this to be a tragedy of the heathen, for, without their knowledge of Our Lord Jesus Christ, there was indeed no cure for this illness. Now that we have blessed their masses with the light and truth of His love, we must strive to seek these darkened souls, and cleanse them with all the force of heaven." It was believed to be part of a Vatican order to suppress all information related to the subject of zombies while others believed it to be an elaborate hoax along the lines of the "Hitler diaries."

The next well-known zombie outbreak in history comes from the island of Roanoke, off the coast of North Carolina in the year 1587 AD. English colonists, isolated from any support from Europe, had sent regular hunting parties to the mainland in search of food. One of these parties disappeared for three weeks before a lone survivor had returned, describing an attack by, quote, "a band of savages…their putrid, worm-ridden skin impervious to power and shot!" Although only of the eleven-man party had been killed, four of the others had been savagely mauled. These men had died the following day, were buried, and then rose from their shallow graves within twenty-four hours. The survivor had sworn that the remainder of his party was eaten alive by his former comrades and that he alone had escaped. However, the colony magistrate had declared the man both a liar and a murder, and he was hanged the next morning.

After this, a second expedition had been sent to recover the bodies "lest their remains be desecrated by heathens." The five-man party had returned in a state of near collapse, bite and scratch marks covering their bodies. They'd been attacked on the mainland, both by the "savages" described by the now-vindicated, deceased survivor, and also by members of the first hunting party. These new survivors, after a period of medical examination, had passed away within hours of each other. Burial had been set for the following dawn but they'd reanimated that night. The rest of the story contained sketchy details. One version of people's speculation describes how the eventual infection and then destruction of the entire town. A second told about the Croatan Nation and how they'd recognized the danger for what it had been, rounding up and burning every colonist on the island. In a third account, these same Native Americans might've rescued the surviving townspeople and dispatched the undead and wounded. All three of these stories appeared in fictional accounts and history text in the past 200 years. None of them presented an airtight explanation as to why the first English settlement in North America literally vanished without a trace.

The next known African zombie outbreak came from East Africa in the year 1839 AD, and was documented in the travel diary of Sir James Ashton-Hayes, one of many Europeans who had been seeking the source of the Nile River. In it, he revealed the probability of a zombie attack, and an organized, culturally accepted response to it:

"He came to the village early that morning, a young Negro with a wound in his arm. Obviously the little savage had missed his spear spot and the intended dinner had kissed him goodbye. As humorous as this was to behold, the events that followed struck me as utterly barbaric…Both the village witch doctor and the tribal chief examined the wound, heard the young man's story, and nodded some unspoken decision. The injured man, through tears, said goodbye to his wife and family…obviously in their custom, physical contact is not permitted, then knelt at the feet of the chief…the old man took hold of a large, iron-tipped cudgel and brought it crashing down upon the doomed man's head, stoving it in like a giant black egg. Almost immediately, ten of the tribe's warriors flung down their spears, unsheathed their primitive cutlasses, and uttered a bizarre chant: 'Nagamba ekwaga nah eereeah enge." That said, they simply headed out across the Savanna. The body of the unfortunate savage was then, to my horror, dismembered and burned while the women of the tribe wailed to the pillar of smoke. When I asked our guide for some sort of explanation, he merely shrugged his diminutive frame and responded, 'Do you want him to rise again, this night?' Queer sort of folk, these savages."

Hayes neglected to say what exactly the tribe was and further study had revealed all of his geographical data to be woefully inaccurate. The battle cry had later been identified as "Njamba egoga na era enge," a Gikuyu phrase meaning, "Together we fight, and together we win or die." This phrase meant that he had been in what was now modern Kenya.

The tanks and trucks of the soldiers came to a stop just outside of the canyon where the wolves lived before the humans got out of them. They were all armed with fully-automatic assault rifles known as the M16 while a few others were armed with fully-automatic shotguns known as Daewoo USAN-12 and AA-12. Each of the humans had a semi-automatic pistol known as Beretta M9. With the assault rifles being 5.56mm, the shotguns being 12 gauge, and the handguns being 9mm, the soldiers were sure they could handle any zombies as long as it was a small outbreak. But they did not know about the slaughter in the territory of the Southern Wolf Pack. The Eastern and Western Pack Wolves did, but they didn't know what had killed all of the Southern Pack Wolves. But, once they found out about that slaughter, these soldiers would locate all of the zombies and make sure not one of them was left alive, whether they were human or wolf. They knew to kill them by aiming for the head. The only way that zombies could be killed was to destroy their brain.

One of the soldiers, probably their leader, began to speak to the group of at least fifty. "If we are up against zombies," he said, "remember that one wound caused by them is a death sentence and you'd might as well shoot yourself in the head if it's not a limb wound. We can cut your limb off and save you if we do so fast enough, but if you're wounded anywhere else…you're fucked. And do not forget that you must aim for the head of any zombies. We must exterminate them all before things get too bad, if that hasn't happened already, and then burn all the bodies to prevent the disease from spreading to other animals. But that won't be the end of our mission. This has been going on since 1968, if not earlier, and no one has discovered the source or cure for this disease. We're also here to change that." He took up his assault rifle and said, "Now let's get this over with before the zombies do."

* * *

**Author's note:** All of the information and back story in this chapter comes from the novel "The Zombie Survival Guide," as well as a timeline I found of the George A. Romero zombie movies. I didn't come up with the information but I felt like it would be good to present information about the zombies that was absent in my previous stories. And what place better than to get the information from the book and movies that I based my zombies on in my previous two zombie stories (which this is a REMAKE of, not a sequel, or else the only characters would be Princess, Claudette, Stinky, Runt, Mica, Magril, Terra, and Danny).


	6. All Hell Breaks Loose

**Chapter 6**

**All Hell Breaks Loose**

"Oh, what the hell?" Claws growled to Scar when she heard machine gun fire off in the distance. She heard it as she'd been riding Scar, with her paws on his chest. She stopped hopping on Scar then got off him before his climax.

Claws went to their den's entrance, stopping her paws angrily. Scar rolled over, stood up, and followed his mate to the entrance. He figured now was a bad time for Claws to get pregnant. Maybe they'd try again, when the zombies, or whatever the danger was, were gone. He'd fucked in her in the ass but couldn't get her pregnant—thankfully. With the danger facing them possibly being zombies, it was the most foolish time for any female to get pregnant but so many had on that night at The Howling Rock. Kate, Lilly, and Claws were probably the only few who hadn't gotten pregnant. Kate and Lilly had given head to their respective mates and Scar had given Claws anal, all of which were acts that couldn't get a female pregnant. And now, the males were glad they hadn't gotten their mates pregnant, and the she-wolves were glad they hadn't gotten pregnant like Princess, Claudette, Candy, Sweets, and so many others had a few months ago. Well, they weren't pregnant now but they were parents. Every one of them. So many two-month-old puppies who were extremely vulnerable to the world. And because of the zombies, if they really were out there in mass, their puppies could be even more vulnerable. Princess, the pack Alpha female, had given birth to three puppies called Terra, Danny, and Sam many years ago, a few months after the war with Banff had ended. They were adults now but she had six more puppies who were only a few months old. The three daughters' names were Michelle, Erica, and Gina and the three sons' names were Matthew (or Matt, for short), Jordon, and Glendon.

"I guess they found something," Scar said. He wasn't angry about the gunshots but that Claws had stopped hopping on him just to see what was going on. The reason he was so angry about the gunshots ruining their sex was that those humans weren't even within view of the two wolves. It didn't make sense to him that she'd stopped hopping on his dick just to see what was going on when she knew the humans were somewhere in the forest around the dens, not where they were.

"No shit, Scar," Claws snarled. She was usually a vulgar wolf but that didn't bother him any. Scar was used to hearing her curse around him. "I'm sorry, but I can't fuck you if I hear gunshots. I'll think someone is coming after me. You know how I have a bad experience with hunters…you expect me to fuck when I hear something that reminds me of my worst fear?"

When they'd been adolescent wolves, before they'd married or started dating, Claws and Scar had had a bad encounter with a hunter. He'd been a man who absolutely hated wolves and had tried to kill them because he'd thought Claws and Scar had been trying to steal his catch. That hadn't been their intention but the hunter hadn't known that. He'd been armed with a 12 gauge hunting shotgun and had chased after the two wolves, hell-bent on killing them for, in his mind, trying to take the dead caribou he'd shot. While Scar had gotten away unharmed, Claws had been shot in the rear end from only five feet away. And if it hadn't been for the park rangers hearing the gunshots and arriving quickly, Claws would've been killed by the hunter, and she would've died of her injuries. The buckshot that had nearly destroyed her rear end had caused lead poisoning and almost cost Claws her life. The hunter had been forced to pay a fine for trying to kill two protected wolves in addition to hunting a national park. He'd also been reported to the authorities and sent to prison for quite a while. Claws was sure that fucking bastard was still there and she hoped he fucking rotted in there!

"You're right," he said. "We can just do it again later…do you want to…"

"Do I want to want? Suck you off?" Claws asked in a bitterly sarcastic voice. "Not now. It's not any different than mating with you! I won't be able to focus about anything with those fucking gunshots going off constantly. I wish they'd just get all the zombies killed and get the fuck out of our home already. I'm already pissed off that not only can we not sleep at night without being woke up by gunshots or fuck without me getting scared by gunshots! Now let's just go see what they're doing so we can see if it's actually zombies or not."

"Won't they shoot at us?" Scar asked in a nervous voice.

"Not if we don't move slowly like zombies supposedly do," she said. "Zombies shamble, we don't. That's what'll keep us from getting shot to shit by the soldiers." Scar asked her if she had any idea where the soldiers could possibly be. "Yes, I do. They're not far from here. It sounds like they're in the forest right behind our den."

* * *

Claws and Scar arrived in a clearing in the forest to a scene that seemed to be straight out of Hell. The soldiers weren't just blowing the heads off of a few zombies but an entire horde and many of the soldiers had been torn to pieces already. Things had gone horribly wrong, clearly, considering the number of killed soldiers compared to the number of killed zombie wolves and zombie humans. There was human blood and gore all over the clearing in the forest. And all of the soldiers were screaming, cursing, and shouting for the others to aim for the head. While it was working, the horde of zombie wolves, and humans, was so large that for every zombie killed, two or more took that one's place.

Claws and Scar were horrified by this site. They never would've expected to see so many zombies in one place or to see the humans losing. They had so power of weapons that the two wolves would've expected them to destroy the horde easily. But there were more dead soldiers than were dead zombies. At the point Claws and Scar had arrived, there were only ten left out of the fifty soldiers they'd seen in the clearing between all the dens only hours earlier. And they now knew how and why the Southern Wolf Pack had been destroyed so easily.

"Fuck…" Claws gasped in terror.

"W-what do we do?" Scar yelped.

"GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!" Claws screamed and took off running. Scar immediately followed her as the last ten of the soldiers were overrun and torn to pieces by the horde. The pair ran until they were back in the clearing between all the dens. They were screaming and cursing frantically as other wolves surrounded them. But neither Claws nor Scar needed to explain what was going on. A sudden scream from only feet away from them drew their attention and they saw what Claws and Scar had in the forest.

Mica and her mate Stinky were running away from another slaughter. All seventeen of Mica's youngest siblings, as well as their pre-adolescent puppies, were being torn to pieces and consumed by a horde of zombie wolves. Many others had been bitten. There were many wolves, in pieces and shreds, all over the clearing now. Not only were Mica's siblings and puppies dead, but also her oldest friend Scarlet who was the niece of Claws, the daughter of Claws's sister. She'd died to save Sam, the youngest, and the runt, of Princess and Runt's first litter. Their second litter didn't get very far, nor did Claws and Scar's first litter of puppies who'd tried to save them. Winston, Eve, Tony, Hutch, Candu, and Melissa were screaming in terror as they ran away from the slaughter, covered in the blood of the at least forty wolves who'd already been torn to pieces. Candy, Sweets, Reba, and Janice weren't far behind them and were also screaming just as loudly as the three elderly Alphas in front of them were.

Kate and Humphrey came running out of their den, as did Princess, Claudette, Stinky, Runt, Fleet, Magril, and Liam from their respective dens.

"What do we do?!" Claudette screamed, as more and more Eastern and Western Pack wolves were torn to pieces. Some of the zombies were coming toward them, shambling at a horrifying slow pace that made it even scarier about how this shambling horde could've killed so many wolves in such a small amount of time.

"I hear a plane!" Princess said, taking charge as the Alpha female she was. "An airplane! We must get on it—and leave the wounded behind! They'll turn into those things in about a day just like Salty, Shakey, and Mooch!"

Remarkably, none of the relatives Kate and Humphrey had been wounded or killed as the group of twenty wolves took off, leaving the wounded and dying behind. The wounded begged to be taken with them but the non-wounded wolves couldn't take the chance of having infected with them on the airplane they were running toward. The wounded would be put out of their misery when the horde reached them and tore them to pieces. Some of them were relatives of Claws, Scar, Candu, and Hutch, including their children. They saw tah the few survivor soldiers, the ones who hadn't been wounded, were filing into the airplane in a panicked frenzy, screaming and cursing all the while. The humans were so panicked that they didn't know the twenty-five wolves run into their large airplane. The wolves vanished into a separate part of the airplane where the humans hadn't gone. The soldiers wouldn't know the wolves were in the storage part of the airplane for two ones. One, they had no reason to go in there at this point, and two, the wolves had hidden in a few steel boxes in there to avoid being seen by the soldiers who would probably kill them on the spot if they were seen.

The twenty-five wolves who'd been lucky enough to get on this airplane before it took off were Kate, Humphrey, Princess, Lilly, Mica, Claudette, Stinky, Runt, Claws, Scar, Fleet, Magril, Garth, Liam, Candy, Sweets, Reba, Janice, Gemma, Melissa, Eve, Winston, Tony, Hutch, and Candu. Each of them hid in the metal crates with their closest friends or relatives. Kate's family had run together into the largest of the crates while Candy, Sweets, Reba, Janice, and Gemma had gotten into the slightly smaller one next to it. Claws and Scar were in another one with Hutch and Candu. In the last of the steel boxes, probably the smallest one, were Winston, Eve, and Tony.

"We're safe…" Mica wailed. "…but look at how many others died and will die! I c-can't believe that so many of our friends and family were killed by something so slow…how…how the fuck is this possible?!"

Kate's voice was shaking just as badly as her daughter-in-law's was. "I-I don't know, Mica…I-I think it has to do with the attack being so sudden."

"Oh…shit!" one of the she-wolves suddenly cried. It was Melissa, an Alpha wolf formerly from Banff who was close to Princess since their puppy days.

"What?!" Princess almost screamed, not know what could be any worse now.

"Bites! Bites! Bites!" Melissa screamed repeatedly.

And sure enough, when the wolves looked at where Melissa was constantly pointing, they saw that five wolves had bites from the zombie wolves on them. They hadn't noticed their injuries when they'd gotten on the soldiers' airplane. The five bitten wolves were Eve, Winston, Tony, Hutch, and Candu…


	7. Crashing into Africa

**Chapter 7**

**Crashing into Africa**

"We're fucked!" Claws roared. "They're infected and not we're stuck in a plane headed for…we don't even know where! With these five on the plane we'd might as well slash our own throats now!"

Kate was still shaking over the fact that Winston and Eve, her parents, had been bitten, and Garth was still horrified that his father, Tony, had also been bitten. Melissa was crying because of the bite on Hutch's body. Candu had no one to cry for him. He had no mate, no puppies, and no family. At least he wouldn't be leaving any relatives behind. But that didn't mean there weren't wolves who would miss him. All of the wolves who hadn't been bitten would miss him, as would they miss Eve, Winston, Tony, and Hutch as well.

"We're not fucked," Melissa growled, "they are! Are you bitten? No! Now don't talk about us as if we're the ones who are dying!"

"Shut the fuck up you rogue bitch!" Claws growled right back. "I don't want to hear it from you now! What do you Banff wolves know? Nothing but how to murder and rape!"

"Claws!" Princess roared. "Have you forgotten that I'm a former rogue? And who is the Alpha female now? Me. Kate and Humphrey wouldn't have chosen me if I 'didn't know what I'm doing.' I know we're good friends but if you're going to talk about Melissa and me like that, you can go fuck yourself then jump out of this plane since we're over the water!"

Claws was taken aback. Princess, who was a good friend of Claws, as she'd just pointed out, normally never talked to anyone like this. But it was easy to understand why Claws's statement about former rogues had pissed Princess off. Just like Melissa, Princess had fled Banff to get out of the hellhole. Princess and Melissa were nothing like the other rogues. They never had been from the day they'd known better than to accept what King and Queen had once "taught" all the rogues.

Claws hackles laid back as Princess towered over Claws. While the two she-wolves looked similar, Princess was much larger and stronger than Claws. She knew not to challenge a wolf like Princess and so she apologized from the bottom of her heart for her cruel statement. They didn't need this right now since Princess was going to lose three family members—Eve, Winston, and Tony—and Melissa was going to lose Hutch, her mate. Hutch and Candu were also good friends of both Princess and Claws. But there was one thing Claws didn't regret saying…

"I still say we are fucked," Claws sighed. "I mean, look at what happened in Jasper! So many of our friends and family died…so many puppies and pregnant females died…I can't believe what happened. It's like something out of a horror story. And now we're stuck on a plane with four or five humans and five infected wolves…headed to…well, we don't even know where!"

"We shouldn't need to worry about them," Humphrey said about the five bitten wolves, trying to get Claws's mind off of them. "They agreed to seal themselves in one of the crates while you were sleeping…"

"…so when they turn," Kate took over in a mournful tone, "their zombie forms won't be able to harm us…but that doesn't change the fact that two of us will be orphans, one of us will be a widow, and that we'll all be losing good friends…"

Magril spoke next, trying to lift everyone's spirits a little. "At least we still have each other," she said.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Mica asked sourly. She'd seen all seventeen of her siblings and all eighteen of her full-grown children get torn to shreds by the horde of zombie wolves. "I lost everyone I ever loved except for Stinky!"

"I'm sorry Mica," Magril said, hugging the mournful gray wolf in the same moment her mate, Stinky, did. "I meant that only one of us could've survived and then he or she would've been all alone on this plane. We're lucky there is twenty-nine of us who will live to see what might have to be our new home." The extra nine non-wounded wolves were the nine children of Princess and Runt, from their two litters, who'd been found safe in one of the steel storage crates.

"'What might have to be our new home'?" Runt repeated in a shocked voice. "What?"

"I don't see how we'll ever get back to Jasper Park," Magril said in a low voice. "We may just have to adapt to wherever this plane lands or ends up."

"I miss Jasper Park and all the deceased already," cried Terra, the oldest child of Princess and Runt, and their old daughter. "I want to go back and kill all those zombies!" She started crying. "They took so many of our friends away!" Terra had been playing in the pond in the clearing with her siblings Danny and Sam and their friends Aron and Jorel. Aron was Terra's true love, an Alpha, and Jorel was an Omega who'd once stalked her constantly with a sexual obsession. They were both dead and Terra regretted being so cruel to Jorel when she'd found him masturbating to her. She'd called him all kinds of names, spitted and urinated on him, and even told her parents about his odd obsession. She would rather find him masturbating to her again then know he'd been torn to pieces because of her. Aron and Jorel had sacrificed themselves to save Terra and her brothers and they'd never forget what those two did for them.

"Oh, I was so cruel to Jorel and now he's dead!" Terra wailed. She was being comforted by her two brothers Danny and Sam, as well as the second litter of their parents Princess and Runt who were still puppies. Princess and Runt had feared their six children were dead until they'd found out that they'd all survived, unharmed by the zombies, and had hidden away in the crate that Princess and Runt had happened to run into when they'd gotten on this airplane. They—the six children—had run onto this airplane right after Aron and Jorel had sacrificed themselves for them, an event that was only minutes before the soldiers and the other twenty-five wolves here had gotten on board as well. The six younger puppies were Michelle, Erica, Gina, Matthew (or Matt, for short), Jordon, and Glendon.

"You can't blame yourself for what happened to Aron and Jorel," said Danny, the second oldest. "And you couldn't have known that Jorel would die before you could apologize to him about your treatment of him. Although I regret him being dead, he deserved to be treated the way you had for how he'd stalked and harassed you during our adolescent years. He's a different wolf now and I'm sure he knew you were sorry about treating him how you did, even though you never told him."

"I still feel bad about treating him how I did," Terra said. "I shouldn't have treated him like that just because he was young and immature. I was young and immature, too! You remember how I acted around Aron when I was younger! Jorel was almost more mature than I was then!"

"Stop blaming yourself, daughter," Runt said as he and Princess came over to them. "It's not your fault…and I'm sure Jorel forgave you because of how much he'd loved you before his death. He loved you even though you'd started dating Aron. And he'd loved you so much that he never got mad at you, even you'd screamed at him."

Suddenly, there was a crashing sound coming from the area above the airplane. All of the wolves immediately ran into the first steel crate they saw and began cowering there as the crashing sounds above got louder. Then there were gunshots, screams, moans, and the sound of tearing flesh. Suddenly, the gunshots stopped, as did the screams until a voice said, "What the hell is...oh shit, shit, shit!" Immediately, the wolves heard that same voice screaming in agony as they heard one, maybe two, shots from his pistol.

Now there was a feeling of everything dropping and the wolves were flung to the other end of the airplane's cargo hold. Thankfully, none of the steel crates went with the wolves due to being strapped down by powerful bungee cords. Now, as the wolves laid together in two or three groaning masses, they screamed as they felt as if they were falling out of the sky. They didn't realize it but one of the soldiers had hidden a bite and just turned…but that didn't make sense to the wolves since it normally only took a day to turn into a zombie. They'd been flying across the Atlantic Ocean for much longer than that. They didn't know if Eve, Winston, Tony, Hutch, and Candu had turned yet but why would a human take so long to turn? Then it hit them. He'd gotten infected while on board the airplane. They remembered how Claws had said she'd seen a rat on the plane that had a bit on its body.

"We're going down!" Kate screamed. "Nobody move until we're down!"

"Oh, shit, we're gonna die!" Claws screamed. "We're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die!" Then there was a loud crash then an exploding sound as the plane crashed and tore in half. Everything went black for the wolves who scattered in terror. There was light shining into the torn-open plane but they didn't see anything but chaos all around them. The puppies were screaming as their parents tried to comfort them and Claws was groaning about a hellish headache she had now.

The wolves saw that they were in a desert, probably in Africa based on how far the plane had gone before crashing. There were a few small bugs and a lizard or two scurrying about frantically because of the plane crash.

"Oh, we're alive!" Claws shouted suddenly.

"Not if we don't get off this plane," Kate growled. "It's about to explode…do you smell that?"

All of the adult wolves sniffed the air before Humphrey gasped, "Leaking gas in a plane that is on fire! Run!"


	8. Princess's Lullaby

**Chapter 8**

**Princess's Lullaby**

It was a week since the plane had crashed into the Sahara Desert, located in the Northern part of Africa. The wolves had adjusted to living in a desert also though wished that they were still in Jasper Park. They were thankful that the airplane had exploded after the crash because that meant all the zombies on board had been destroyed, possibly including the five bitten wolves—Eve, Winston, Tony, Hutch, and Candu. Of course, that didn't mean they were any happier about their deaths. Well, they thought that those five poor wolves' bodies had been destroyed, sparing them from the fate of reanimating into zombies, but they hadn't that the box containing them had fallen out of the plane when it'd crashed.

The things the twenty-nine surviving wolves hated about the Sahara Desert were the lack of precipitation, the extremely high temperatures, and the constant abuse their bodies had taken from the sunlight before they'd found this abandoned cave. It was still hot but at least it was noticeably cooler than it was outside the cave. They were at the back of the cave where it was coolest and, fortunately, there was a decent-sized pool of water that had dripped from the rock formations on the cave's ceiling. The truth about this desert was that, in addition to being extremely dry, was that it was also one of the hottest regions in the world. The average annual temperature for the desert is 86°F (30°C) but during the hottest months temperatures can exceed 122°F (50°C), with the highest temperature ever recorded at 136°F (58°C) in Aziziyah, Libya. And now, it was 123°F (50.6°C), and the wolves had almost died because of how hellishly hot it was outside during the day. The nights weren't any better, usually bringing lows of below 0°F or 0°C. The twenty-nine wolves had to gather together at night to survive but stay away from each other during the day to survive. It was usually about 70 to 80°F (21 to 27°C) to during the day in this cave, which was much more comfortable than the temperature outside.

The wolves slept during the day because of how hot it was and they hunted at night because they had strong enough fur coats to keep them warm as long as they stuck together. Of course, they didn't leave Princess and Runt's six puppies alone ever. Those puppies couldn't keep themselves warm with just fuzz on their bodies so it was normally Kate, Princess, Lilly, Mica, and/or Magril who stayed with them while the others were hunting. And Runt always stayed with them to fight off attackers, even if that meant three wolves stayed behind rather than just two. Runt was a paranoid wolf who'd refused to leave his puppies from the moment they'd arrived in the Sahara.

It was night now and many of the wolves were off hunting. It was only Kate, Princess, and Runt in the cave watching over Michelle, Erica, Gina, Matt, Jordon, and Glendon. The puppies hadn't been able to sleep comfortably from the day of the plane crash not only because of the crash but because they'd been forced to listen to the humans in the front being torn to pieces by the zombies. No puppies needed to listen to such a horrific sound, especially ones who'd already been through so much in the past week because of the outbreak in Jasper that had claimed the lives of many of their closest friends, and then an outbreak on the plane so suddenly.

Princess might've been a cold-hearted bitch but when it came to making her puppies feel safer and calmer, she was a caring mother who would do anything to make them happy if it meant making herself look like a fool. She had a good singing voice, as well as a good howl, and she had a shockingly calm singing voice compared to the serious tone she spoke in. As Kate and Runt lay there, on the cave floor, with their bushy tails wrapped around the scared puppies' bodies, Princess began to sing a calm song she'd once heard coming from the trailer of a family who'd been spending a week in Jasper Park to explore the park. They'd been watching some animated movie about blue birds and she'd heard this touching song, and the parents of the two children explain what the verse that was in a foreign language—Portuguese—meant.

_Moonbeams and starlight, magical twilight_  
_The warmest ray, hear it whispering your names_  
_Rainbows at midnight, sparkling night skies_  
_Don't go away, stay another day_

_My throat, it asks me to sing_  
_And the pain goes away, like a memory goes away_  
_Ever since childhood, and until the sun rise_  
_To rest, when I find you_

_Stretch my spine, to tap dance_  
_And the rhyme says, that I will love you_  
_So open the circle for me to show you_  
_I came here just to sing_

_Stretch my spine, to tap dance_  
_And the rhyme says, that I will love you_  
_So open the circle for me to show you_  
_I came here just to sing_

The first verse, in particular, had a calming effect on Princess's six shaken puppies and it helped them fall asleep quickly. They were no longer shaking and whimpering now, as they sleep peacefully and snored quietly. Princess and Runt felt smiles growing on their faces, as did Kate, seeing her six new grandchildren so happy now.

"Thank you, dear," Runt whispered happily. "I don't think they would've gotten to sleep without your singing. Your sneaking away proved to be useful," he added then nuzzled Princess's cheek with his wet nose.

"I couldn't just let them suffer," Princess said. "Now that they're sleeping, we should get some rest before the others come back with food." She licked Runt's cheek gently as she laid down next to him then she turned so she could lay her down on his gray pack. Princess closed her eyes to get a few minutes of sleep before the others hopefully came back with food. Her puppies really needed it more than the adults did and that was the main reason they'd gone out on a hunt in the first place.

But the nine wolves in the cave didn't know or expect that things would get so much worse when the hunting group returned. All because of natives of the Sahara desert...

* * *

**Author's note:** Anyone who has seen Rio 2 will know where this song is from and know what movie I referenced.


	9. A Jackal Causes Trouble

**Chapter 9**

**A Jackal Causes Trouble**

"Come along, Runt," Princess said to her younger mate.

"Where?" he asked.

"Our puppies are hungry," she said, "and Terra and Danny have agreed to watch over them until we get back."

"But where are we going to get food for them?" Runt asked. "We're in a desert and it's not easy to find what they want."

"They'll eat what we find or they'll go hungry," Princess growled before apologizing for her tone, even if it was true.

Runt told her that she shouldn't apologize since they couldn't be picky in the desert. It was eat what they could find or go hungry then die instead. Everyone in the group knew that, right down to the puppies. It was a survival situation entirely based on what they ate, drank, and did. There weren't any zombies to worry about, but they had more dangerous threats at hand—dehydration and starvation. Food and water were both rare in the desert, so they were fortunate to have a large pool of water in the cave they lived in. It was deep and came from a drip at the top of that cave, so they hardly had to worry about a water source. They just had to worry about catching food that made up for the effort—that is, the calories they burn to catch the food. Of course, wolves were excellent hunters, and rarely used too much energy (calories) up to catch prey, even something as large as a caribou. So for them to have to hunt animals as small as horned lizards, rattlesnakes, and other desert dwellers was too easy for the wolves to accomplish.

The wolves also knew from past encounters, some that were almost fatal, that they could find the following animals in the desert: Barbary sheep, Oryx, Anubis baboon, spotted hyena, dama gazelle, common jackal, golden jackal, sand fox, ostriches, secretary birds, Nubian bustards, cobras, chameleons, skinks, various lizards, crocodiles, numerous species of ants, scarab beetles and the "deathstalker" scorpion. The ones that had almost caused a few deaths were the cobras, some of the ant species, the scorpions, and obviously the crocodiles, even though they'd never had a dangerous encounter with…yet. Those were the only animals they avoided entirely, as well as the hyenas and jackals. They knew from seeing those animals that they were in packs, like wolves, so it was for the best to not kill them unless they wanted to start a war. And the Jasper wolves, numbering at twenty-nine, including puppies, would be easily outnumbered by any pack of jackals or pack of hyenas.

It was usually extremely easy for even a single wolf to take down something like a Barbary sheep or a dama gazelle because those animals had never seen a wolf before, so they didn't know how to survive an attack by even a single wolf, let alone an entire group of them. The same was true for the ostriches, sand foxes, the reptiles, and the baboons. The dromedary camels were also easy for the wolves to take down since, like so many other animals here, had never seen a wolf before, as well as the fact that they were so slow compared to other prey sources.

Several feet away from their group's den, Princess and Runt began speaking again.

"What should we bring back for our puppies?" he asked her.

"I was thinking we catch a gazelle," she said, "so we have food for the entire group later. I'm sure they'll want to eat when they wake up, but we must feed our puppies first. They need to eat more often than the adults in our group do." Princess got confused when she saw Runt walk away from here. "We are you going?" she asked him.

"I'm going to scout ahead for prey," Runt said, "then I'll come back to you if I find anything worth our effort."

"Just be careful out there," his older mate cautioned. "You remember what almost happened to you with that cobra."

"Yes, I do…" Runt shuddered at the thought of almost getting bitten by that deadly snake. "…I don't really want to think about it…" And then he took off before anymore could be said about that incident involving the cobra on their second day in the Sahara desert.

Runt didn't stop his slow running until Princess was out of sight. But that wasn't why he stopped running. He swore he could hear something moving around the bend of some sort of rock structure. It sounded like footsteps, something sniffing and digging at the sand, and occasionally making a low growling sound. Runt would've thought it was another wolf like himself but the animal came into sight and they were both shocked by this sudden encounter. It was a golden jackal, a female one. She seemed to be about his age, Runt guessed, and was probably the only beautiful thing he'd seen that lived in this desert, besides the she-wolves of his group.

The she-jackal regained her senses at the same moment Runt did before she stared at the gray wolf in awe. "Wow…" she gasped in a drawn out voice. "Ain't you handsome! What's your name…?" She was speaking in a voice as if she were in love with Runt. And that was more clear because she couldn't keep balance and fell on her belly, then stared up at Runt with a smile on her face. It was an almost seductive smile, Runt thought.

But he figured he'd might as well answer her regardless. What harm would giving his name to a she-jackal do? Nothing he could imagine. "My name is Runt," he said, trying to hide the hesitation in his voice. "I'm from Jasper Park Canada, but an outbreak of zombies forced us to leave in an airplane which crashed here about a week ago."

This female jackal seemed to get more serious when he said that, as she stood up. "I'm sorry to hear that," she said. "Did you lose anyone in the crash?"

"We didn't lose anyone who wouldn't have died in the first place."

"What?" she gasped.

"My grandparents and some of my family's friends had been bitten," he explained, "and they died in the crash, sparing them from turning into those…zombies. I don't really want to talk about what we went through, so what is your name if you don't mind me asking?"

"My name is Angel," the she-jackal said, "and I'm the daughter of my pack's Alpha male and Alpha female."

Runt had to laugh at this. And he had to explain himself when Angel asked him why he was laughing. "It just struck me as ironic that you're the offspring of an Alpha male and Alpha female. I'm the youngest son of the survivors of my pack's Alpha male and Alpha female. There are twenty-nine of us."

"We seem to have a lot in common," she said, "right down to our relation between species."

"You're a gray wolf, right?" Angel asked him. Runt nodded in response. "We golden jackals are more related to gray wolves such as you than we are related to other species of jackal."

"What?" Runt was shocked by that fact. He'd heard of jackals but never could've imagined he was so closely related to Angel's species—golden jackals.

Angel's tone sudden went from serious to seductive. "You know, Runt," she said, "you and I are very much alike. It would be best if you were with me, part of royalty." Runt knew that the "royalty" she was referring to was being the offspring of her pack's leaders. If that was the case, then he was "royalty" too, even if she wouldn't accept that as "royalty" when he told that to her a second time.

But, obviously, Runt was shocked by her proposal. Mostly because he already had a mate—Princess. "What do you mean by that?" he asked with a gasp. "With you? But I just met you!" He wouldn't bring Princess into this unless he really had to because he didn't know how Angel would react to him saying that. She might not even care and say he should leave her.

That didn't do anything to stop Angel's advances. She began rubbing up against Runt's sides and licking him all over the right side of his body, as well as his face. And no matter what he did to turn her away, she kept rubbing against and licking the gray wolf.

"I would be a lot better than any of these bitchy wolves around here," Angel said. "I've seen what the she-wolves with you are like…so bitchy and whiny. Trust me, love…"

That pissed Runt off. Not only was this "Angel" - the name was showing to be painfully ironic - calling Princess "bitchy," but he was calling all of the females bitchy. The only bitch here, he felt, was Angel, not any of his fellow survivors!

"They're not bitchy!" Runt growled at her, but she didn't stop rubbing against and licking him. His words and lack of interest in Angel seemed to have no affect on her. "And love?" he gasped. "I am NOT your love." Again, his words, meant to anger her, did nothing. He still felt Angel rubbing against the side of his body and running her tongue across his neck and face, even when he moved away from her.

_Is there nothing to stop Angel's advances?_ he wondered, as she wetted his gray fur with her tongue, and stroked his side with her paws. He gave up trying to stop the golden jackal and sat there, hoping she'd stop soon…before Princess found them. The last thing Runt wanted to happen was to be found like this, by his mate, with a golden jackal flirting with him. He feared Princess would think they're cheating if he found him letting Angel touch and lick him like she as.

"Your fur is so soft, Runt," Angel almost moaned, as if being around Runt made her feel pleasure…feel horny. "I love the feeling. You're so hot…"

Runt almost gasped because of how he felt this was going too far. Angel was licking his chest and going lower…toward his…well, he wasn't going to let Angel touch him there! He was too loyal to Princess to let _that_ happen and he was going to stop her before she got to his belly.

"Thank you…but, I already have…" Runt heard footsteps behind them and he looked to see the last wolf he'd wanted to. Princess. _Oh no,_ he thought. "…a mate…"

Angel didn't notice Princess as the she-wolf just stood there in shock, her jaw dropped. Princess couldn't believe what she was witnessing. Was Runt cheating on her and letting this jackal bitch blow him?! She could only see it from behind, so it looked like she was giving Runt oral sex! But she, thankfully, thought otherwise when the she-jackal lifted her head up and there were no fluids on her muzzle. And she could tell how Runt might not've been trying to stop her.

"Come on, Runt…" Princess heard the she-jackal say, "I know you want to fuck me…our species are closely related. A lot more than you think. And I'd love to take that big dick of yours and…"

"WHAT?!" a female voice roared. Runt knew it was Princes and he felt so embarrassed…so bad about being caught and even more so about being caught by his mate. Princess was running toward the two wolves faster than she'd ever run in her life. She arrived to see the she-jackal stroking her mate's dick and her tongue hanging out. There was a bit of saliva on it.

"R-Runt…" Princess almost cried. "…how could you…?"

"I told her to stop but she wouldn't listen!" Runt screeched. "I swear, Princess…I would never cheat on you! Especially not with some random female or a jackal! You're the love of my life and I'd never cheat on you for everything you did for me!"

"Oh, quit you're lying, Runt," Angel said calmly. "You wanted me to give you head!"

"You are a lying-" Runt began.

"-BITCH!" Princess roared. "I'll tear your fucking throat out for seducing my mate! Be gone, you fucking jackal whore, or I'll leave you for dead!"

"My father won't like to hear that," Angel whined.

"Shut the fuck up you fucking whore!" Princess roared and then ran after Angel, who screamed as the she-wolf chased her until she was several yards away. Princess came back alone, wondering about what had really happened.

"I'm sorry Princess…I really am," Runt whimpered. "I tried to convince her to stop but she wouldn't even when I said I already had a mate…she was relentless just because her species is closely…I'm really sorry that this happened…"

Runt was on the ground in a posture of submission, with his paws over his head, ears laid back, and his tail tucked between his legs. He was whimpering like their puppies had once when Princess had scolded them for throwing Paddy, one of the two birds who'd helped Kate and Humphrey return to Jasper, around like a ragdoll. He was scared to death of his mate, who was known for her axe crazy threats, which were so much worse than Eve's ever had been. Both Princess and Claws made Eve seem like the nicest wolf on Earth because of how rough their threats were.

"I know," Princess said with a growl, "but _don't_ ever stick around if this ever happens again or you and I will be over. And I will _not_ let you anywhere near our puppies again. You can go live with Magril since I know how you used to love her so much before I showed up in Jasper! I know you'd never cheat on me, but I won't put up with you not having the strength to tell another female 'No'." She changed the subject. "Now get up, dear, and let's find some food for our puppies."

* * *

**Author's note:** Sorry about the delay with this story. I work weekends so don't expect me to update this story on Friday afternoons, any time Saturday, or Sunday mornings.


	10. Dissension

**Chapter 10**

**Dissension**

Princess and Runt returned to their group's den without telling them what happened between Runt and Angel the golden jackal. They knew that it was for the best if no one learned about that situation, especially their three adult children and their six puppies.

But just because Princess had driven Angel away and wasn't angry at Runt didn't mean they could expect peace now. Garth was ranting to Lilly about how he wished he was the Alpha male and she was the Alpha female because of how things had gone to Hell so quickly. And that Princess and Runt wouldn't listen to either of them over Kate and Claws. Garth even figured that they were ignoring his rant about them, but he'd probably find out sooner or later that they weren't ignoring him. Garth was extremely pissed off by the events that had happened on the day of the outbreak and what happened to his father, Tony, and the others who'd been bitten shortly before the airplane had left Jasper Park. He blamed Kate and Humphrey for the death of those five wolves—Eve, Winston, Tony, Hutch, and Candu, especially in the case of his father.

Although Lilly didn't agree with Garth that her sister, Kate, and brother-in-law, Humphrey, were to blame for everything, she was listening to Garth because he was known for his sudden and violent outbursts like his father had once been. Tony was the reason Garth didn't know his mother. He'd once acted out so violently that it'd resulted in the death of his mate before Garth's eyes had been able to open. The she-wolf who'd nursed Garth and his siblings, who didn't live more than a week, wasn't his mother but Garth had never been told that. The older generations of wolves knew that but they were all dead now so there was no one to tell him why he never knew about his real mother. But Garth was just like Tony and would sometimes hit Lilly and call her a stupid bitch when she did something wrong, even if it was just something pointless like taking too long to make him cum in her mouth when she'd be giving him a blowjob.

_He complains about the stupidest of things, _Lilly thought. She sometimes got sick of his abuse and wanted to be away from the cruel fucker that she'd married. Lilly never would've thought, years ago, that their relationship would turn into such an abusive one. _Kate's lucky she didn't have to marry this asshole. I wish I could be as lucky!_ But Lilly knew if she said she was over with Garth that he'd probably beat her to an inch of her life, or even kill her, so she kept her muzzle shut about that, as much as it pained her to keep quiet. No one knew about her hate and fear of Garth, the wolf who everyone thought she loved as much as Kate loved Humphrey. She'd rather be a widow then married to Garth! She'd make that the case if she had to fucking murder that son of a bitch! Garth was the kind of wolf Lilly wished to see burn in the deepest pits of Hell like she was sure King and many other rogue wolves from Banff were doing right now and had been for several years! If Lilly were a strong wolf, she'd attempt to kill Garth herself. She wished she was as strong of a she-wolf as Princess and Claws were.

"Your Omega's whore of a sister," Garth was saying, much to the chagrin of his mate, "is as stupid as the Omega she fucked years ago and sucks off every night!" They weren't in hearing range of Kate and Humphrey now or else Garth would be getting an earful from Kate and Humphrey, in addition to the new pack leaders Princess and Runt. Princess was a mean bitch, and she knew it, and would give Garth Hell if she heard him talking shit about her parent-in-laws like he was now. "The only thing Kate is good as is sucking Humphrey's dick—it's no wonder she let Princess and Runt succeed them! Probably so she can blow him more, like the whore she is," Garth added bitterly.

_You get your's sucked more than Humphrey does, you fool,_ Lilly thought angrily. _Oh, I want to put his entire dick in my mouth so I can just BITE THE FUCKING THING OFF ENTIRELY! He's starting to piss me off…_

"And Princess isn't better!" Garth continued ranting. "I hear Runt moaning from the Alpha den every night and shouting 'Oh, yes, suck my dick, Princess' or 'I'm cumming, oh, yes, I'm cumming.' I'm fucking sick of hearing the last two Alpha whores…I mean Alpha females giving head or getting fucked every night! You would be the first good Alpha female since your mother and I would be the first good Alpha male of this pack since both of our fathers! We don't need another whore—I mean Princess's daughter Terra—as the Alpha female next! You would be so much better of a successor than Princess is now and Terra ever could be."

"What are you saying?"

"I say we kill Princess and Runt," Garth said, "as well as Kate, Humphrey, and Terra so there is no choice but for you and me to lead the other survivors. Princess is only good as things that involving Runt's dick, not leading a pack of survivors! She's going to get someone killed."

Lilly snapped in that moment. "Oh, go fuck yourself in the mouth!" she almost roared. "I'm sick of you talking shit about my sister, her mate, and their successors! If you are going to say one more thing about them, I'll turn you into a bitch! I've listened to you insult them for long enough and I'm about ready to go for your throat so I don't have to listen to your bullshit anymore!"

Garth snarled and lunged at Lilly. She screamed loudly when he pinned her to the ground. So loudly that the other wolves, in the cave, heard her, and the entire group came running.

"What are you doing?!" Claws growled and tackled Garth off Princess. As they fought, Kate and Princess helped Lilly help, she began panicking and gasping.

"What happened?" Kate asked her little sister.

"G-Garth…h-he said he would…"

"Don't!" Garth almost begged as Claws blocked him from Lilly.

"What?" Lilly almost growled. "Don't tell them that you were trying to convince me to help you murder Kate, Humphrey, Princess and Terra?!"

"WHAT?!" Kate roared at the same moment the others did. It was so loud that several desert-dwelling birds flew off in a panic.

"And he said you were whores that weren't good at anything but giving head," Lilly added.

"You fuckin' bitch!" Garth roared and ran Claws over. That pissed her off and she jumped on Garth's pack, clawing and biting into his brownish-orange body. "I'll kill you and this bitch on my back!"

"ENOUGH!" Princess roared and everyone seemed to free. Garth froze like a statue, as he bled, and Claws slipped off the Alpha wolf, landing on her butt in the sand. No one had ever heard Princess roar like that before. They'd never expected her to have such powerful vocal chords. The wolves who she hadn't been addressing were just as shocked as Claws and Garth were.

Kate and Princess, the targets of his vulgar, almost sexist, insults, approached the shaking wolf. It was easy to understand why they were angry, considering everything Lilly had just told them, and how he'd just threatened to kill both Claws and Lilly.

"What has gotten into you?" Kate growled at him, towering over Garth as if he were just a puppy she was scolding. "You insult us for being the current and former Alpha females of the pack, and then you threaten to kill not only Claws but Lilly, your own mate? You aren't acting like yourself, Garth…"

Before Kate could even finish her sentence, Garth lost it. He didn't want to be scolded by her, of all wolves. "Just shut the fuck up! Just shut your mouth! Shut the fuck up! Before I break your mouth, I'll take you out!"

Now it was the other wolves turn to react, but not in the way Garth had expected as he lunged toward Kate. All of the Alphas, plus Claws and Scar, tackled Garth, who couldn't do anything under the weight of so many wolves. Lilly was just standing there, almost too stunned to move, as Garth failed to break away from this pile of wolves.

"Do you want me to tear his fuckin' throat out?" Claws growled. "I'll be glad to do it!"

"NO!" Lilly screamed. "Don't kill him!"

"Excuse me?" Princess gasped. "Weren't you just screaming about this scumbag trying to kill you?"

"I hate to tell you this," Lilly said, "but it was all part of a plan between the two of us to kill all current, former, and soon to come Alpha females and Alpha males so we could take over by making it seem as if it had been an accident."

Everyone gasped. Except for Garth and Lilly, of course. "Then what do we do with these two traitors?" Scar asked through clenched teeth.

Princess answered him immediately. "They'll be exiled now and be considered enemies of our group," she said angrily. "I don't want to see either of you traitors again! If you do show up, you'll wish that you died in this fucking desert because I'll strip your bodies of flesh! I'm sure Kate and Claws would be glad to help me!"

Of course, the other wolves were too busy with a sudden argument that had erupted between certain wolves. Claws was screaming at Reba and Janice because they'd suddenly said something about Garth and Lilly that had made her hackles rise immediately.

"Why don't we just kill them?" was what Janice had asked, causing an immediate breach of peace. But Kate and Princess were too busy chasing Garth and Lilly away from their camp, barking and snarling like two possessed wolves, to notice the massive argument going on behind them. They wouldn't return to the camp until Garth and Lilly were so far away that they wouldn't find their way back, if they even survived the rest of the day out in the desert's sun, which caused 100 degree or higher temperatures.

"Why don't you fucking veggie whores go fuck a tree?!" Claws screamed at the vegetarians. "Or rather, a cactus, since we're in a fucking desert!"

"Claws, dear," Scar said, trying to make his mate relax, "you need to calm down…"

"Don't tell me to calm down!" Claws roared at him. "You can go fuck a cactus, too!"

"Fine," Scar growled with offense. "We're done! I never enjoyed fucking you and I'm glad you stopped before all this happened! I can't begin to imagine what diseases you gave me, you whore." Scar turned his back on his mate, inadvertently running into Melissa who seemed sympathetic of the former Eastern Pack Wolf over what Claws had said to him.

"There was no reason for her to say that to you," Melissa said, knowing that Claws heard her. "Obviously you're too good for her, if she treats you like that!" she added in a voice loud enough to be sure that Claws heard her.

"Fuck you both!" Claws snapped. "If you feel that way, Scar, we're done! I don't want to see you again unless you want to apologize or come to me to get begging for help FROM THE GODDAMN ZOMBIES! Get out of my sight before I kill the both of you!"

Claws started barking like a possessed wolf and that was enough of a reaction for both Scar and Melissa to run off. She didn't and wouldn't know it, but they'd go on to fuck each other just to get back at Claws for what she said about them. And Melissa would return alone, pregnant, suddenly, claiming that a male jackal raped her, and Scar tried to save her from the, but they got separated. She didn't want them to know the truth, so they'd thought up a lie that would let them accept Melissa again since she hadn't really done anything wrong. They did and they began to worry about Scar, despite what he said to Claws. Even Claws worried about her former mate…

* * *

**Author's note:** I feel like the title "Dissension" is fitting considering the definition ("disagreement that leads to discord") and what just happened.


	11. Never Piss off an Alpha

**Chapter 11**

**Never Piss off an Alpha**

Seven wolves were on a hunt—Kate, Humphrey, Princess, Runt, Claudette, Stinky, and Mica. They were hunting for enough food to keep their group of now twenty-six, rather than twenty-nine, wolves. Garth and Lilly had gone insane, wanting to kill Kate, Humphrey, Princess, Runt, and Terra, because they were jealous about not becoming the Alpha male and Alpha female of the united Eastern and Western Pack.

And then Claws had broken up with Scar because he'd said things about her that he shouldn't have, despite her vulgar outburst, and he'd mated with Melissa just to get back at them. But they'd felt bad about what happened, so Melissa had returned to the group, claiming that she'd been raped by a male jackal, and Scar had been wounded when he tried to save her. That lie was how she'd covered for herself smelling like Scar in addition to a jackal—she'd accomplished that by rubbing shedded jackal fur all over her rear-end and shoulders to make it seem as if she'd really been raped by a male jackal. She also told them a lie that he was still out there, but she had no idea where he was. Search parties lead by Princess and Claws had failed, many times, to find him. They'd given up hope of finding him, as much as Claws didn't want to. Claws felt bad about yelling at Scar, as well as at Reba and Janice, since they'd all run off. In fact, much of the group had split up. Reba and Janice had left the group, taking Gemma with them, because of Claws, as had Candy and Sweets. They were all living in different caves—ones that were close to the larger cave of the big group. Claws and Melissa, however, had stayed with the Kate's family.

The prey the wolves were looking for was Barbary sheep, dama gazelle, sand foxes, or ostriches. Eating a sand fox or two would mean eating members of the canid family—foxes, wolves, jackals, coyotes, and so on—but desperate times called for desert desperate measures. They didn't have a choice—those five animals they'd heard about from talking to three secretary birds (_Sagittarius serpentarius_), a very large, mostly terrestrial bird of prey. Unique to Africa, they were usually found in the open grasslands and savannah of the sub-Saharan region, the area where the survivors from Jasper Park were now living. While some were rough-talking birds, the ones they'd managed to speak to had been kinder than any they'd seen before them. They'd recommended a few animals that the jackals loved eating, having been sure that the wolves, a similar animal in their eyes, would as well.

Kate and Humphrey were leading this hunt, with Princess and Runt behind them, and Claudette, Stinky, and Mica following behind them. Five wolves were more than enough to take down the animals that they were looking for. They were animals that one of the female secretary birds, whose name was Cleopatra, had told them would be easy for the wolves to take today. They could even do it on their own, if it came to that, because none of these animals had ever seen a wolf before. If the wolves' hunting skills didn't cause their deaths, the animals' shock of seeing so many of a new predator all of a sudden would cause their deaths.

And in this moment, the seven wolves were chasing after a pair of dama gazelle, which Humphrey had inadvertently spooked before the other wolves had a chance to go in for the kill. Both being Omegas, Humphrey and Runt lacked the skill the other wolves—all current or former Alphas—had. Princess had been an Alpha in Banff before becoming an enslaved Omega after doing the right thing, but she was now a Beta, and the Alpha female, since being accepted by the wolves of Jasper Park years earlier.

All seven of the wolves had immediately taken off, at full speed, after the pair of dama gazelles as soon as they'd noticed the two animals, the wolves' prey, were trying to get away. They weren't too mad at Humphrey because they all knew he hadn't been trained to hunt as well as they all had been early in their lives. As Omegas, Humphrey and Runt had only been taught about keeping the peace among wolves of the Western Pack. It wasn't the Omegas' job to hunt, but to keep the peace. Hunting was always left to the Alphas and the Betas. But now, the Omegas didn't have much of a choice. There weren't many survivors left, so they all had to do what they could to help the other survivors out.

"Lunge!" Kate, the best hunter present, commanded, and she lunged for the male caribou with Princess by her side. At the same moment, Claudette and Stinky lunged for the female while Humphrey, Runt, and Mica ran along on either side of the lung wolves, wanting to be there in case they needed help. But for Humphrey, pure instinct—that of listening to every one of Kate's commands—took over, and he suddenly lunged after the two gazelle. But it wasn't the gazelle that he hit. It was the other four lunging wolves, particularly Kate.

The four lunging Alphas yelped when they realized it was Humphrey who'd collided with them. As the five wolves landed in a heap, the two frightened gazelle kept on running away. Runt and Mica didn't go after them but instead they went to where the other five had landed in a heap.

"Are you alright, moth-" Runt began, but was cut off.

"Why did you do that?!" Kate barked at Humphrey. "You knew to stay there unless we needed help!"

"I'm sorry," Humphrey apologized with a whimper. "Instinct took over when you ordered them to lunge…I didn't mean to ruin our hunt…"

"What kind of dumbass excuse is that?!" Kate yelped. "Your instinct took over! I've never heard such a stupid excuse in my life, especially from an Omega!"

"That's enough, Kate…" Princess said as she got up, but she was cut off as well.

"No!" Kate snapped. "He's done this before and so have other Omegas I've seen taken on a hunt! They shouldn't hunt until they've gone through all the training us Alphas do over the winter at Alpha school!"

"W-What?" Runt whimpered. "Are you saying I shouldn't hunt…?"

"Yes!" Kate growled. "That goes for you too! You're an Omega, too!" Then she turned back to Humphrey as Runt started to cry, as he was consoled by Claudette and Mica who couldn't believe Kate was talking to Humphrey and Runt so cruelly. "Listen to me, Humphrey," she commanded her mate Humphrey. "This isn't the first time you've fucked up one of our hunts but it will be the last time!"

"W-What?"

"You heard me, damn it! Are you Omegas as bad at hearing as you are at hunting?! Get the sand out of your ears and you might HEAR ME!" Kate raised her voice in that moment and that sent Humphrey into a posture of submission at Kate's front paws.

"I-I'm sorry…" Humphrey cried.

"I don't care if you're sorry!" Kate snapped again. "You're beginning to make me wonder why I married you in first place! I should've married an Alpha—at least he wouldn't ruin so many of my hunts! You remember what happened when we were young! You ruined my first hunt!"

"Claws and Scar did that!" Humphrey protested.

"You were just as involved as they were, with your peace talk and trying to stop them from tearing Candu apart," Kate growled. "I don't want to hear it! I'm this close to saying we're over just like Claws did to Scar!"

"How could you say that…?" Humphrey gasped, as did the others. "I…I thought…you l-loved me…"

"I can't force myself to love you any longer if you keep fucking up so many of my hunts! You can't even follow a simple instruct: 'STAY PUT'! What has gotten into you, Humphrey?!"

"Mom!" Claudette interrupted suddenly and unexpectedly. "What is wrong with you?! You've never acted like this! Dad is crying! You're breaking his heart!"

"He needs his heart broken!" Then she turned right back to Humphrey for a second time, ignoring her daughter's pleas to stop tormenting her father. "That's what this foolish Omega deserves for ruining so many of my hunts! They all deserve it!"

"I'm an Omega, mom!" Runt almost wailed, as he sat there with Mica's front legs wrapped around him and Stinky seething at his mother's actions. "I'm an Omega and a runt! I can't believe you're actually acting this way towards dad! He did nothing to you! I did nothing to you!" He was in tears but that seemed to have no affect on Kate's pissed off demeanor.

Princess had seen enough of this shit. It was her turn to have some input and she wouldn't be as fucking nice about it as the others had. "You call yourself his mate…?" she barked angrily. You certainly don't show it!" Then she added, "You should call yourself a BITCH instead of a mate!"

It wasn't being called a "bitch" by Princess that got through to Kate but what Runt said next that really hurt. "I see now that you're just like the rogues…" he said in a slow and angry voice. "…you only care about Alphas…" Then he added something that shocked everyone, even Princess, and she knew it was true. "I never heard someone say such cruel things…you are reminding me more and more Queen!"

Kate hauled off and cuffed Runt across the head for saying that, feeling no remorse. And then she went right back to screaming at her mate whom everyone had thought she loved. "I WISH YOU WERE DEAD YOU FILTHY OMEGAS!" Kate roared at him, at the top of her lungs, in a voice that carried across the desert in an echo. And everyone's jaws hit the ground. The word "Omegas" implied that she was talking to both Humphrey and Runt.

Princess lost it. "What the fuck is wrong with you?! That's your mate you're talking about Kate! And your son, my mate! I won't stand for it!" Now, it was Princess who was towering over Kate, now on the ground in fear right in front of Humphrey, who was too stunned to move an inch.

"No, Princess," a male voice said suddenly. It was Humphrey. Then he looked at Kate, who was shaking. "Fine," he spat disrespectfully. "If you want me dead, then you'll get what you want!"

Kate's mindset changed entirely after hearing that. And after seeing Humphrey run off before her eyes. "No, Humphrey!" she wailed. "C-Come back! Don't run away…no…" Her voice rose. "I didn't mean it, Humphrey! Come back! Come back, please come back! Oh, w-what have I done…?!"

Claudette only felt bitter toward Kate, even if she were her mother. She spoke in an angry tone. "If dad dies…I'll blame you…" she said slowly.

Stinky's anger was about to boil over as Mica tried to keep her mate calm. But he failed and he exploded unexpectedly. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" he roared. "What if he dies out there, mom?! One of the last things you said to him was 'I wish you were dead'!"

"I'm with Claudette," Runt growled. "If dad dies out there…I'll never forgive you. If you really mean what you said…prove it by going after him before something bad happens!"

"And don't come back if you don't find Humphrey—alive or at all!" Princess growled. "I won't want to see you again if he dies or you can't find him! But stay away from me for a while if you do find him, Kate…"


	12. Garth and Lilly's Dark Plans

**Author's note:** I'd like to point out that the events of this chapter happen at the same moment as the events of the previous chapter. They begin and end at the exact same moment.

* * *

**Chapter 12**

**Garth and Lilly's Dark Plans**

Garth and Lilly weren't dead—they were far from it. But they were alone in somewhere in the Sahara Desert and had no one but each other to keep in company. They'd been chased away from the cave, where the other survivors lived, by Kate and Princess, and were now living in a small oasis about half a mile away.

At the same moment that Kate was leading six other wolves on a hunt for food, Garth and Lilly were busy plotting their revenge. Being driven away had pissed them both off but just because they were half a mile away from the other survivors didn't mean they weren't still hell bent on killing Kate, Humphrey, Princess, Runt, and Terra. Now, they were actually more determined than ever to kill those five wolves, two of whom they felt like had screwed them over, and ruined their lives in only minutes—Kate and Princess. Those two bitches are the ones who'd driven them away and they would be the first two they kill when they had the chance.

"But, dear," Lilly said, trying to keep her mate calm, "how will we get close enough to their territory again, unnoticed, and kill them, then get away unnoticed?"

"Will we," Garth said. "Don't doubt me, Lilly. We will kill them—" He was referring to Kate, Humphrey, Princess, Runt, and Terra, the oldest pup of the last two. "—all and get away without them catching us. It doesn't matter if we are noticed but as long as we get away and they die, that's all that matters."

"Who should we go after, first?" she asked him.

"Humphrey," he said. "That Omega pussy—no offense, Lilly—won't see it coming and he's useless, so he'll be easy to lure away and kill."

"I have an idea that might help in luring him away," Lilly said suddenly.

"What is it?"

"I found an abandoned tent with some 'sexy' looking clothes lying around in it," Lilly explained. "If I wear that clothes, including the piece that seems would go over my face, I'll look like what the animals here call 'belly dancers' and 'seductresses' and I'll be able to distract Humphrey long enough for you to kill him. But I need your permission for something…"

"What?" Garth asked hesitantly. Just because of the term "seductress," he was already worried.

"I…I seduce…and then fuck Humphrey," Lilly said slowly, nervously, "so he'll…be distracted long enough for you to kill him…" Lilly hated to say this to Garth only because she was afraid of him.

Garth was stunned. She was actually suggesting that she fuck Humphrey just so Garth could kill him. He wasn't angry but impressed. He couldn't believe that Lilly wanted Humphrey dead so badly that she'd mate with him to accomplish that.

"Oh," Lilly moaned in fear, "you hate me now!" She covered her eyes with her paws, laid back her eyes, tucked her tail, and began whimpering with fear. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I should've have-"

"No," Garth cut her off. "It's a great idea. And it shows how much you want Humphrey dead. If we succeed in killing him…I'll let you fucking him, and getting pregnant with his puppies, go. If you don't want them, we can just let them die alone in this hellhole. And if we do succeed in killing him, I'll fuck you in places you've never had a dick stuck before, starting with your ass."

A large, sexually excited smile grew over Lilly's seemingly innocent face. She'd given oral to and received oral from Garth and been fucked by him vaginally, but he'd never given her anal before. She'd heard that it hurt when the male stuck himself in, but after that, females claimed, "it was the best sex you'd ever have." That was according to Kate, after receiving anal from Humphrey sometime before blowing him at The Howling Rock.

"And I'll put your entire dick in my mouth." Lilly was referring to the act of deep throating. "All eleven inches of it! If you make me feel good in ways that have never been done to be before, I'll do the same to you."

"Enough of talking about how we're gonna be fucking each other," Garth said. "Let's talk about how we'll kill Humphrey, that scumbag who stole Kate from me! I love you Lilly, but I can't stand to think about someone as lovely as Kate is being married to an ugly little shit like Humphrey. I can't stand it so much that I can say it pisses me off! Kate is too good for him, and so are you! You're the only good Omega out there. The rest can burn!"

_That sounds like something the rogues would say_, Lilly thought, but decided to let it go. That could get her in trouble if she said that to Garth. All of the Banff rogues, dead and living, were former Eastern Pack Wolves, so it was no wonder Garth said this. But even if that were true, Lilly would be a fool to tell him that. Lilly didn't hate Omegas because, first of all, she was an Omega, and second, she was a member of the Western Wolf Pack. The Western Pack Wolves were much more tolerant toward Beta and Omega wolves, unlike the Eastern Pack Wolves, except for the rare few like Claws and Scar.

"How should we kill Humphrey?" Garth asked Lilly aloud. "I want you to suggest something _brutal_."

Lilly had to think for a minute or two but she got something that would disturb and impress her mate at the same time. It wasn't like Lilly to even think of what she just did and it would almost horrifying her mate, she was sure. "I think we should," Lilly said slowly, "tie Humphrey up with vines—if he doesn't accept my advances, which I doubt he will—then I'll get on top of him and fuck him so hard that I make him feel like I broke his dick and crushed his balls. Then after he finally cums in me, you come up behind him with a sharp rock and slice his neck open so far that you'll see everything inside there before either of us tears his neck contents out. And then we'll _tear _off his dick, _tear _his belly open, and _rip_ out all of his digestive system—crush his skull like a fuckin' egg, and then leave his corpse at the opening of the others' cave. We'll leave it there as a warning as to what we'll do to Kate, Princess, Runt, and Terra!"

Garth's jaw hit the sand. He was stunned and impressed at the same time, as Lilly had thought he would be. "Holy…shit…" he gasped. "Who are you and what have you done with Lilly?" he almost laughed. "I wish you'd thought like that when we had been fighting the rogues all those years ago. You're just like your mother, Eve, and I mean that in a good way. I didn't expect you, of all wolves, to be more brutal than your mother ever had been. It's a shame your sister and her children aren't more like Eve. I might not want to kill Kate and Runt if they were more like Eve than they were like Humphrey."

"Do you want me to be more brutal?" Lilly asked, "I can if you want me to be, my love…" She gave him a lick on a certain part of his part that she was used to sucking, as she had at The Howling Rock, not long before the zombies had attacked their pack's territory.

And she continued licking him until she saw eleven inches in her face. Eleven inches that went right into her mouth. Garth moaned as his mate's head went up and down. "Oh, yeah," he moaned in a low voice, "y-you're so g-good at sucking my…oh, Lilly…yes…put the entire thing in your mouth. Please swallow my dick before you swallow my…oh...my c-cum…"

Lilly mumbled something but obviously, her mate couldn't understand her because of having his entire dick crammed in her mouth and down her throat. Garth was sure that she'd just complimented him for the size of his dick, as she bobbed her snow-white head up and down its length. She was used to this length—eleven inches—when it came to dicks because she quite often pleasured Garth, mostly due to her own decision. Garth rarely wanted her to blow him, but he enjoyed it when she gave him a wet surprise. She was really good with her tongue, wrapping it around his dick to prevent it from being hurt by her sharp teeth, which had already soaked his dick wet. She could feel Garth's knot up against her chin as she forced her head entirely down his dick's length. She loved licking that soft piece of flesh with her rough tongue.

"Umm…mmm…" Lilly mumbled.

"Oh, yeah," Garth moaned again, as he felt the tip of his dick poke the back of her throat. "You're great at giving head…you get better each time you…oh…you do this…"

"Mmm…mmm…" she mumbled again, when she tasted Garth's pre-cum in her mouth suddenly. Lilly hadn't realized she'd been giving him head for that long. She must've been distracted by how she loved the taste of his dick and the feeling of having the entire thing crammed her in mouth. This was the first time she'd deep throated Garth and she loved feeling his "head," as she called it, poking the back of her sensitive throat.

"Mmm…mmm…mmm…mmm…" Lilly mumbled in a gagging voice as she suddenly received a thick, warm, and salty mouthful of Garth's fluids. It was thicker, warmer, and saltier than she remembered it usually being. But she didn't complain any. She loved his fluids more and more when the thickness, warmness, and saltiness were greater.

"OH, LILLY!" Garth screamed as he flooded Lilly's mouth with his semen. He screamed so loudly that he didn't hear Lilly mumbling and gagging. She was gagging because he'd ejaculated at the moment Lilly had forced his dick into the back of her throat. "Oh…Lilly…" he moaned as Lilly lifted her head up from his crotch. His fluids were all over her muzzle and usually pink tongue and now her face because she'd released his dick too soon. She felt his nice, hot semen dripping down her face. Well, it was a nice sort of hot in Lilly's mind because she enjoyed facials.

"If you do that good with your plan," Garth complimented his mate as she licked his fluids off his crotch, "then you'll definitely help me kill Humphrey. We should leave once I regain my composure…I want him dead before the day is over…"


	13. Zombies!

**Chapter 13**

**Zombies!**

"Is that the tent you were talking about?" Garth asked Lilly as they approached a tattered tent with a few bloodstains on it.

The two wolves could tell the blood was on the inside. They could see the shape of a body inside the tent, but that wasn't what Garth and Lilly were here for. They were here for the clothing, of a belly dancer, Lilly said she'd seen in the tent. While Garth kept watch for whatever could've killed this Arabic woman, Lilly went into the tent and went for the rack at the side of the tent. Thankfully, it wasn't behind the body or she would've had to drag the clothing over the body. And she didn't want it to be bloody because Humphrey wouldn't want any part of her if she had blood on her.

"Now be quick about putting that on," Garth instructed her.

She had to look at the pinkish-colored clothes a bit before figuring out how to put it on, as a wolf, not a human. Lilly started with the bottom part of the outfit, which was like a dress only without the top half. Shockingly, it fit the she-wolf perfectly, as did the top, which was reminiscent of a bra. Only this was decorated with all sorts of unique designs. It, as well, fit Lilly perfectly.

"The mask, too," her mate said. "You don't want him to recognize you."

Lilly put on the mask, which thankfully, fit even more perfectly than the rest of this outpost did. It covered her face up so only her eyes showed. Her muzzle was covered, so Lilly was sure Humphrey wouldn't recognize as long as she wore this dead woman's outfit.

"Can we go look for—" Lilly began, only to be interrupted.

"Not yet," Garth said. "Your mane will give you away."

"What?" she gasped. "You're not saying I have to shave my mane, are you?"

"No," he said. "I will tie your mane back with that band so you'll be even less recognizable than you already are."

"Those cactus flowers worked wonders, too," Lilly said, almost with a laugh. She was referring to the cactus flowers that she'd managed to get from a few birds that had intended to eat them. She and Garth had given those birds some meat, leftovers from an orphaned jackal puppy they'd hunted down and killed, because the birds had seemed to be starving. They'd exchanged the meet for the twenty-some flowers, which Lilly had then rubbed all over her body to mask her real scent. And so she would smell really good before carrying out her plan to mate with Humphrey.

When Garth was done tying her mane back, Lilly looked like an entirely different wolf. But that wasn't all. Garth had more to their plan that he hadn't told his mate yet.

"Now, do you know how to speak Russian or talk like a Russian?" he asked her.

"No," Lilly said, confused. "Why?"

"You are going to tell Humphrey that, like our group, you were on a plane from Russia," Garth explained, "and it crashed somewhere in this desert. And that you are the only survivor." He paused. "And to explain the clothes, you will tell him that you might be a wolf but you were the family pet and they treated you like a human. It'll make perfect sense to a gullible wolf like Humphrey, I'm sure."

"Oh, Garth," Lilly almost moaned, "you're so smart and quick thinking." _And you're a fucking asshole,_ she thought bitterly. _You don't know it, but I puked your awful tasting cum up after giving you head. I only did that so you wouldn't beat me within an inch of my life for suggestion I mate with Humphrey so you can kill him. But you don't know what I have in store for you…_

"It was you who led to me thinking of most of this," he said in return. "But enough. We need to find Humphrey so you can go to him with your false sob story about losing everything."

* * *

Garth and Lilly's plan would end up being put into action so much earlier than they'd expected it would be. They found Humphrey wandering the desert three hours later, all alone and in tears. He was moaning miserably about how Kate had been so rude to him and their son, Runt, for being Omegas. It almost made these two almost rogue wolves feel bad for him, but such feelings all but went away since they were here to kill him. But at least Lilly would make this miserable soul of an Omega feel better before Garth would murder him.

"Get down there," Garth whispered to Lilly.

Without saying a word, Lilly let herself tumble down the sand dune as she put out a believable cry of distress that drew Humphrey's attention almost immediately. He looked up to see a snow-white wolf running toward him, wailing and screaming, and wearing some sort of pink fabric over her face, breast, and hips. Humphrey thought she was in trouble, so he ran to help her, but they ended up running face-to-face into each other.

Lilly hit Humphrey with such a force that he was knocked on his back and she ended up on top of him in a daze. She kept on her act of wailing as she got off him without even apologizing.

"Are you alright?" Humphrey asked as he got up. "Is someone after you?" He was frantically asking her, as he tried to calm her down enough to get some answers.

"Dead!" she screamed.

"Who?!"

"My entire family, my owners!" she cried and felt Humphrey wrap his arms around her clothed body. "W-we were on a plane from Russia…" she was speaking with a faked Russian accent that she'd learned about from hearing a Russian couple speaking when they'd been in Jasper Park. "…and it crashed into this desert not far from here…only I survived…my owners are dead…I'm a stray…"

"B-but you're a wolf," Humphrey said, shocked, "and you were a pet?"

"I-I," Lilly stammered in her faked Russian accent, "would be dead if it weren't for those humans. They found me as an orphaned puppy and took good care of me until…the plane crash…the passengers…s-some of them had died of an illness…then returned to life and tore everyone apart before my eyes."

"But how did you survive…?" Humphrey asked Lilly, who was still in his arms, with her snow-white face buried in the gray fur of his chest.

"I was in a cage-like object," she sniffed sadly, "and the zombies—what else could they be called?—were unable to break into the cage to get to me…being a pet saved my life. I just wish there were more survivors than only me…"

"I'm sorry," he said. "I really am." Then he went on to explain how his group of survivors had gone through something similar, only in Canada rather than in Russia.

Lilly seemed to perk up now. "We're a lot alike then," she said in a somewhat more cheerful voice. Now she was looking at his face and was awestruck. "You know, you're hot," she said suddenly in a more seductive—and suddenly happy—voice that shocked Humphrey. How could a harshly grieving wolf be so happy all of a suddenly?

"W-What?" Humphrey gasped.

"You heard me," she laughed. "I think you're hot…nice, beautiful face…big down low…just right for making love…" She was speaking slowly. "…tell me…"

"…Humphrey…" he told her his name hesitantly.

"Tell me, Humphrey, how hard would you like me to hop on your dick?" she asked, only to receive a stunned gasp as an answer. Because he was too stunned to talk, she suddenly began rubbing her body all over Humphrey's body. He thought about how her fur was so soft…as she rubbed her fresh-smelling body all over his. She was dancing around him seductively, saying all sorts of sexual things in an attempt to get him hard. He knew she was trying to arouse him, especially when she used her paws to lift the top she was wearing up to show him her chest.

Sure, even if she had no fur there, Humphrey wouldn't see anything, but just the act of her showing him her breast almost turned him on. She could almost smell the scent of his arousal as a male could smell the heat of a female. And they both knew she was in heat. That was part of the reason Lilly was doing this. Truly, she'd always wanted to have puppies with Humphrey. To further arouse his dick, Lilly lifted a bit of her dress up so he could see her butt, which she began shaking in his face. She lifted her tail up so he had a clear view of her pussy, which was already wet. She started rubbing her pussy against his face, almost quite literally, before he could back away.

_She's so wet…_Humphrey thought. _No!_ he silently scolded himself. _You have Kate…and you must prove you're loyal to her even if she just treated you like dirt. Whatever you do, don't cheat on your mate!_ Humphrey knew that Kate would always love him, even after what she said to him and Runt about being useless. He was sure that his loving mate hadn't met any of that…but if she found out he'd let another she-wolf mate with him, they would be over!

Now that she was satisfied by how she'd gotten Humphrey's face really wet with her vaginal fluids. His face was almost as wet as her pussy. She figured the reason he hadn't fled (remembering how Kate was his mate) was because of how much he was stunned by her actions, not how interested he was in her actions. She knew that Humphrey wasn't interested in her because he'd never cheat on Kate, but she would try to fuck him regardless. She knew that, after rubbing her wet pussy all over his face, that he could smell Lilly's heat. But yet he didn't want to mate with her, much to her disappointment.

But, suddenly, Lilly got another idea that should convince him. But if that didn't work…well Garth had plans for how she could fuck Humphrey. Lilly lay down on her back, with her legs spread and the dress moved in a way that Humphrey had a clear view of her pussy. Obviously, it wasn't as good of a view as when she'd been shaking her butt in his face, but she was sure he could see it as she rubbed her paw over it. She would sometimes stick one of her paw's toes inside and finger herself until she let out a discharge of her fluids. She was doing everything that was possible to get Humphrey to fuck her on the spot. If masturbating for him didn't do it, then nothing would, and Garth would have to take over. She was rubbing her already wet pussy with her paw, which as an action that made it even wetter.

Humphrey finally regained his senses enough to get up and try to walk away. But he felt Lilly get on him in an instant. She was rubbing her pussy against his rear-end, trying to get his tail up so she could rub against his tailhole. Lilly let out a pleasured scream as she orgasmed on his rear. Humphrey felt weak in the knees and bad because he was married to Kate, even if he was doing everything that was possible to get away from this supposedly Russian she-wolf. But no matter what he did, she followed him.

Suddenly, she yelled, "Now!" as she continued rubbing herself against Humphrey's rear.

And then Humphrey felt something crack him across the back of his head. He didn't know who did it, but Garth had just knocked him unconscious, using a good-sized rock. Humphrey fell to the ground, face first, and Lilly mocked him by rubbing her crotch against his muzzle so he would get a taste of her fluids when he woke up.

"Now let's tie him up," Lilly said to Garth, "with those vines you brought, and then I'll hop on his boner like there's no tomorrow."

* * *

Humphrey came to five minutes later. While everything was blurry for him, he swore he could feel not only something wrapped around his wrists, of his front legs, but his head against something wooden. And then he realized that it felt like someone was hopping up and down on him. His vision was still blurry, but he could make out a mix of white and pink blurs hopping up and down on him. He felt paws on his chest.

Although he had known what was happening before his vision became clear—due all the times Kate had ridden him—he wasn't any less shocked to see the same she-wolf, who had been seducing him, now hopping up and down on his dick, with her paws on his chest. And he realized what he felt around his wrists—it was powerful vines, too powerful for a somewhat weak wolf like Humphrey to break free of. He was tied up to a tree as the now topless she-wolf bounced on him against his own free will. Common sense told them both that it was impossible for Humphrey to not moan as she basically raped him—he didn't want to mate with her, despite all her previous actions—but that didn't mean he was actually enjoying this.

He didn't know when this she-wolf had taken her top off but he knew she had because he was staring at her pure-white breast and still-masked face as she bounced up and down on him. She had her paws on his chest as if to hold him down, even though he wouldn't be going anywhere due to being tied to a tree by vines. She had orgasmed again, this time on his dick, not his rear, as she forced the entire thing into her pussy every time she brought her body down on poor Humphrey. He was doing all he could to get away but the vines were too strong. He'd never seen vines so strong. Humphrey wanted to get away from this situation so much due to his loyalty to Kate, but he knew escape was impossible because of the vines and the she-wolf who was raping him. Lilly figured he was enjoying this because he was moaning, but the truth was he'd rather be dead than let another female mate with him, or mate with another female. He only wanted to be with Kate, not whoever this belly dancer-like she-wolf was. He figured she'd taken her top off to arouse him further as she went up and down his entire length, and it worked, but nothing she could do would make him enjoy this.

"Please!" Humphrey begged as he tried to avoid letting out any sort of moan, knowing that it made the female think he was enjoying something he didn't. "Just stop! I already have a mate! I-I don't want her to think I'd cheat on her…"

"It's not cheating if you don't tell her," Lilly joked, through moans. "You don't have to tell your mate that I seduced and fucked you…and that I'm gonna deep throat you when this is all done…" Then she began moaning and screaming vulgarly. "Oh, yes! You're so big…I love hopping on you...and I can tell you love being hopped on! I doubt your mate, if she's done this, has ever hopped on your dick as good as I am!"

"Just stop!" Humphrey begged and failed to suppress a moan that resulted from her force herself down on him again. She screamed as his entire dick, except his knot, was forced into her again.

"I'll stop when you cum!" she laughed sexually. "You'll have puppies with two she-wolves soon!"

"NO!" Humphrey almost wailed that time. "I'm loyal to Kate…just stop and untie me…and let me go…you don't have to do this…"

"Yes, I do," Lilly said. "You know you love being fucked by me…I can tell you enjoy this better than any sex you'd had before now. Don't deny it, love…"

"I'm not your love!"

"Ha-ha," she laughed again, in a sexual tone, as she let out a milder orgasm. There was so much of her vaginal fluids all over his crotch and the sand they were fucking on. "You're funny," she added. "I know you're just saying all this because you're afraid this 'Kate' will find us…I doubt she'd care, and would probably join in so we can have a threesome…"

"Oh," Humphrey moaned, somewhat in pleasure, and in pain, when she slammed her smaller body down again. And that did it. He felt his release of fluids into Lilly's womb—and they both screamed. For Lilly, it was a scream of pleasure as her womb was flooded. And for Humphrey, it was almost a scream of pure terror because he'd just possibly gotten another she-wolf, who wasn't Kate, pregnant. He felt so guilty even though he had no control over the situation.

"Well, well, well," Humphrey heard a familiar voice said as Lilly, not that he knew it was her yet, got off him, but didn't untie him. He knew why when he saw a reddish-brown male wolf come into view. Garth. It was Garth. And he seemed to have an extremely sharp stone in his paw.

"You…you did this just to kill me?" Humphrey gasped.

"Yes, she did," Garth let out an almost evil laugh. "And she did a good job, too! I wanted you dead from the moment you married Kate—you're no good for her. No Omega male is good for someone like Kate. She deserves an Alpha to be her mate, not some no-for-good Omega!"

Lilly seemed to freeze with horror suddenly when she thought she saw a few wolves shambling toward them from over the sand dune. "Oh, no," she gasped.

"What is it?" Garth asked her.

"Z-z-z-" she stammered.

"Spit it out!"

"ZOMBIES!" Lilly screamed and suddenly attacked Garth, taking the sharp rock from him.

"What are you-"

"I'm sorry, but I can't let this happen to him!" Lilly explained. "Not only could he become the father of my puppies…but I can't kill my brother-in-law!"

"WHAT?!" Humphrey gasped.

And to answer his question, Lilly removed the mask and untied her mane, and fixed it, to reveal her real identity.

"Lilly! How could you do this to me?" he asked with horror.

"I'm sorry!" Lilly wailed. "But I'm making up for it now!" And then she cut him free with the sharp rock when she then dropped. "Now run before the zombies kill us all!"

Humphrey took off with Lilly behind him. But when he didn't see her by his side, after hearing her yelp, he stopped and looked back to see Garth on top of her. She was pinned to the ground and he was tearing her legs apart!

"Garth, don't!" Humphrey cried.

"Shut up!" Garth roared. "She's a traitorous bitch. And she don't deserve to have your puppies…she can die here to those zombies. Yes, run," he added in a mocking voice when he stopped mutilating his mate's feet. "And don't try to save her! She won't make it…" That was the last thing Garth said before he ran off.

Humphrey ran to Lilly, whose hind legs had been mutilated by Garth. She screamed in pain when he tried to help her up, as the zombies neared the two wolves. They were only feet away now. "Just go, Humphrey," she cried. "You can't help me…I'm sorry about doing this to you…I never should've listened to Garth even if I was afraid of him. I-I really fucked up, Humphrey, and I don't deserve to live after what I did…"

"Don't say that!" he gasped. "Kate misses you…she knows that you were afraid of Garth all along…I don't want to have to tell her that her sister died…"

"Fine," Lilly said in an almost meaningless voice, "get me out of HERE!" She began screaming.

"No, Lilly!" Humphrey screamed as the zombie wolves—he now recognized them as Eve, Winston, Tony, Hutch, and Candu— pulled her away from him. He watched in horror as they tore into her flesh, spraying blood and gore all over the desert. Lilly died as her guts were torn out of her and eaten with her flesh.

"I'm sorry," Humphrey wailed in a whisper. "I'm sorry!" he wailed loudly.

* * *

Elsewhere, Kate, Princess, Claws, and Kate's children were looking for Humphrey. He'd been missing for several hours but now, half an hour after Lilly died before his eyes, not that they knew it, they found a bad sign—

—a gray wolf was lying motionless on the sand, with blood all over his face and chest.

"Humphrey!" Kate almost screamed.

"Dad!" Claudette, Runt, and Stinky gasped in unison.

As the four wolves ran to the seemingly lifeless body, Princess and Claws looked out in disbelief. Was Humphrey really dead?

"No, Humphrey," Kate wailed. "I-I wanted to tell you I'm sorry for what I said…" her voice cracked. "…and now you're dead! Oh, I'm a stupid, heartless bitch…I can't believe he died thinking I hated him…"

Kate closed her eyes, not hearing her children saying that she shouldn't be hating herself because she hadn't meant it, and she had a flashback of when Humphrey ran away…

_Kate had hauled cuffed Runt across the head for saying that, feeling no remorse. And then she'd gone back to screaming at her mate. "I WISH YOU WERE DEAD YOU FILTHY OMEGAS!" Kate had roared at him, at the top of her lungs. And everyone's jaws had hit the ground._

_Princess had lost it. "What the fuck is wrong with you?! That's your mate you're talking about Kate! And your son, my mate! I won't stand for it!" _

"_No, Princess," a male voice had said. It had been Humphrey. Then he'd looked at Kate, who had been shaking. "Fine," he'd spat. "If you want me dead, then you'll get what you want!"_

_Kate's mindset had changed entirely after hearing that. And after seeing Humphrey run off before her eyes. "No, Humphrey!" she had wailed. "C-Come back! Don't run away…no…" Her voice had risen. "I didn't mean it, Humphrey! Come back! Come back, please come back! Oh, w-what have I done…?!"_

_Claudette had only felt bitter toward Kate, even if she were her mother. She'd spoken in an angry tone. "If dad dies…I'll blame you…" she had said slowly._

_Stinky's anger had been about to boil over as Mica tried to keep her mate calm. But she'd failed and he exploded unexpectedly. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" he had roared. "What if he dies out there, mom?! One of the last things you said to him was 'I wish you were dead'!"_

"_I'm with Claudette," Runt had growled at his mother. "If dad dies out there…I'll never forgive you. If you really mean what you said…prove it by going after him before something bad happens!"_

Kate felt even more heart broken now that she was lying over the body of her mate, who appeared to be dead. She felt terrible after wishing he was dead and now he was…it was painfully ironic. She hadn't meant that she wanted him dead but now it seemed he was.

"Oh, if I could take back what I said," she whispered in grief, "I would…and I would gladly switch places with you, Humphrey…I love you…I always have and I never would intend to break your heart like I did." She collapsed over his body as he had when Humphrey had feared Kate was dead years earlier. "You can't hear me, but I hope you forgive me in wolf heaven…"

Kate began howling mournfully, standing up now, at the mid day sky. She was the only wolf who didn't notice Humphrey moving at her paws. He groaned but she didn't hear him. And she didn't notice until she heard Runt cry out, "Dad!"

And when Kate looked down, she was shocked to see Humphrey was alive, and saying that he forgave her for wish he was dead hours ago.

"Oh, I'm so sorry Humphrey," she cried loudly.

"What happened to you?" Claws asked, motioning her paw toward the blood on his fur.

Humphrey's expression went dark.

"What?" Kate asked with dread.

"Garth and Lilly attacked me…" he began. "And Garth forced Lilly to…rape me…but then Lilly had a change of heart when the zombies showed up and attacked Garth. She cut me from the vines and we turned to leave but Garth attacked Lilly. H-He mutilated her feet as the zombie wolves got closer, then ran off…I-I tried to save Lilly…but she was torn to pieces…I'm sorry, Kate…"


	14. The Oasis

**Chapter 14**

**The Oasis**

"Oh, we're finally safe!" the she-wolf almost let out a moan. It was, shockingly, Claws. She was in the pond, in the middle of a massive oasis the survivors had found recently, up to her neck in the warm, bubbling water. Many of the other females were there. It seemed that only Kate wasn't there. She was somewhere near the edge of the oasis with Humphrey, mourning the loss of her little sister Lilly. Kate had known Lilly from the moment they'd been able to see and hear the world.

Kate was now remembering all the good memories she'd shared with Lilly before all this had happened. They'd been through more together than most siblings ever could go through together. Kate's earliest memories of Lilly involved them playing together as puppies. There wasn't too many special that had happened to them during their puppy days, and not much did happen to them until Kate had to go to Alpha school for the winter. Her father had been the instructor of Alpha school at the time, but that hadn't meant he'd gone easy on her.

Kate also remembered how she'd used to chase Lilly around the Western Wolf Pack's Territory as if she'd been a lone caribou. She wished she could do that now, in this desert, but Lilly was dead because of Garth. Humphrey had told Kate about how Garth had mutilated Lilly's hind legs because she'd saved Humphrey's life. And then about how the zombies had torn Lilly apart before Humphrey's eyes. Kate was in tears as she remembered everything she'd been through with her sister. They'd been through many good times, such as their puppy days and when they'd been allowed to marry whom they wanted, and bad times such as fearing Runt was dead because of the rogues and all this going out because of the zombies.

It was the zombies—and Garth, whom Lilly had once thought she loved—that had taken Lilly away from Kate. She couldn't blame zombies for Lilly's death—they didn't think and only acted. But she could blame Garth. He'd known what he'd done when he attacked Lilly and Kate would _never_ forgive him for causing her little sister to be killed by the zombies. If she ever saw him again, Kate would raise Hell on Earth, and kill him so badly that murder wouldn't be a good enough term to describe what she would do to him. She would be so brutal in killing Garth that if there were still rogues with them (not former rogues like Princess and Melissa), those rogues would be disturbed beyond belief. Her brutality would probably give them nightmares. Not only had that fucker tried to murder Humphrey, and had forced Lilly to rape her mate, but he also basically murdered her little sister! He didn't strike the death blows—the zombies had—but Garth's act of mutilating Lilly's feet had caused her to do, so, in Kate's mind, that was no different than being Lilly's murderer! Kate wanted to be, so fucking badly, the murder of Garth for everything he'd done. She knew how he'd threatened her and Humphrey's life, in addition to the lives of Princess, her mate Runt, and their oldest daughter, Terra, who was next in line to be dominant wolf of the pack.

Kate was shedding tears larger than she ever had in her life in this moment, even if she was extremely pissed off because of Garth, and sad, at the same time, over the death of Lilly. She hadn't witnessed poor Lilly's death like Humphrey had, but she could almost picture how it had taken place. As if knowing it wasn't bad enough, just not being able to get the picture of Garth mutilating her sister, and the zombies tearing her apart, out of her mind was bad enough. It broke Kate's heart so bad…and it made her so angry that she just wanted to fucking kill something, whether it relieved her angry or not. She hoped that something would be Garth…or that jackal bitch that had seduced her youngest pup, Runt.

"Oh," Kate moaned miserably, "I c-can't believe Lilly is dead…I'm glad she proved to be a good wolf, but…Garth…why? Why did he have to kill her just because she did the right thing?"

"Garth has no heart," Humphrey said in a voice that was serious for him. "He doesn't even care if he murders his own mate…if someone betrays him, he'll kill them…"

"Damn him," Kate cried. "Damn him…"

"I'm really sorry Kate…" Humphrey said. "I wish I'd been able to do more to save Lilly…but the zombies…they reached us too quickly…if Garth hadn't done what he did, maybe Lilly would still be alive…"

"I know!" Kate wailed. "How could he do such a thing to an innocent wolf like Lilly?! First, he orders her to mate with you no matter how she does it, and then he tries to kill you, then kills her for saving you?! What kind of mate is he?!"

"I wouldn't even call him a mate," Humphrey growled. "A wolf like him doesn't deserve such a caring term. Mates care for each other…and obviously Garth didn't care about Lilly if he did that to her…"

"I'd like to fuckin' do it to him," Kate growled, experiencing a sudden mood swing. "I would tear his fuckin' feet apart like he did my sister…and…and…and…leave him for dead like he did Lilly…and I know there wouldn't be someone like you there to help him get away…"

"Oh no," Humphrey gasped.

"What is it?" Kate gasped in the same way.

"I'm sorry about Lilly…but we have more problems than just Garth…" He paused briefly. "…the zombies that killed Lilly—Eve, Winston, Tony, Candu, and Hutch. There are zombies out there…and there could be more out there…ones who have been infected by them. Jackals, humans, birds…who could begin to know what animals have been infected by our once family members."

"Oh, fuck," Kate moaned miserably again. "As if Garth and a whore of a jackal—" She was referring to Angel, who'd tried to seduce Runt into mating with her, only to be driven off by Princess in a fit of rage. "—now we have to deal with zombies! How could they have survived the plane exploding?"

"They were in one of the steel boxes…maybe it fell out of the airplane before it crashed," Humphrey offered. "I can't think of any other way they could've survived the explosion, even if they were in a steel box."

"I don't foresee us having too much of a problem with the zombies," Kate said, trying not to choke up over Lilly's death. "I think we may have more trouble with that jackal whore's pack, based on how she had said 'My father won't like to hear that,' according to Princess. I'm afraid we haven't seen the last of this 'Angel,' a name that Runt told me is not very fitting. Pardon my language, but he told he he'd never seen a female of any species as slutty as her."

"At least he's honest," Humphrey said, "and not brutal with his honesty like Princess is."

And as if on cue, Runt appeared with a guilty look on his face. Humphrey asked him if there was something wrong.

"I heard you talking about Angel," Runt whimpered.

"Yes?" Kate asked.

"I still feel bad about what happened," he said. "Most for how Princess had been the one who found me with Angel's head…ahem…between my legs…and licking me…there. I wish Princess didn't have to see that…I love her too much to make her think I'd cheat on her. I never would. I'd choose death over cheating on the one female I truly love. I'm the father to two litters of puppies with her…and yet she thinks that I wanted a blow…" The way Kate was looking at him told that he shouldn't say that word, but her words told him otherwise. "…blowjob from Angel. I'd never accept any pleasure from a female other than Princess, even if she were perfectly fine with it. I'm too loyal of a mate to ever accept sex from anyone but her…I try to tell her that but she just doesn't trust me."

"Well, son," Kate said in a serious voice. "What would you do if you were Princess and you came across that?"

"I'd be pissed," Runt admitted bluntly.

"And what is Princess?" his mother asked him.

"Pissed," Runt said.

"Exactly," Kate went on. Runt noticed how she was still in tears, which was understandable considering how she'd lost her sister, Lilly, who had been his aunt. "Just give Princess some time and she'll be over it. I'm sure she's just shocked by finding that, even if you have admitted many times that you'd never get with anyone but her."

"I wouldn't get with another female even if she died," Runt said suddenly. "I'd rather stay mateless than marry anyone but her if she died."

"I wish all wolves were like that," Humphrey said. "Kate and I both said the same thing. If either of us dies, we will never remarry."

"I'm more afraid of having to marry a jackal like Angel than another wolf, at this point," Runt admitted. His parents thought that was a joke at first but they soon realized it wasn't when their son didn't laugh. "I'm being serious. There are no other wolves here…if any of us do lose our mates, the only option are the packs of golden jackals here. And that may not be a problem so long as we avoid Angel. If Candy, Sweets, Reba, and Janice married from the pack, maybe, just maybe, it would prevent what I fear will happen soon."

"What?" his father asked him.

"War," Runt said briefly. "All out war with the jackals over how Princess treated Angel, the daughter of her pack's leaders."


	15. A Violent Encounter with Jackals

**Chapter 15**

**A Violent Encounter with Jackals**

The next day, Runt was relieved to learn that Princess had forgiven him for what happened between him and Angel, knowing that it wasn't his fault that the she-jackal had been so relentlessly in her act of seducing him. She told him that she was sorry about threatening to leave him and keep him away from their children, adult and puppies.

Runt yelped when Princess suddenly tackled him in the grass in the oasis. She put her paws on his shoulders and her hips over him in a way that reminded him of being ridden by her, something that she'd done to him once—at The Howling Rock not long before the zombies had made their presence known in Jasper.

"Come on, Runt," Princess said, laughing at her mate as he struggled to break free. "You know you love it when I'm on top of you!"

"Only when we're making love!" Runt jokingly whined. "Not when you're using me as your prey for a practice hunt."

"What, are you saying you want me to hop on you now? I can feel how excited you are," she added in a tone that was familiar to Runt. But it was her words that made his face turn red underneath his fur.

And as if to embarrass her younger, and smaller, mate even more, she was pounding her hips against his and rubbing her paws all over his chest. Princess was a serious wolf but there was nothing she loved more than embarrassing Runt. She'd once gone as far as to touch his dick in front of his siblings and their mates, and jokingly comment about its "small size" after putting her head there as if to get a closer look at it.

Although Runt was not inside her, she was still moving her hips against his body as if she were riding him. But she could feel how hard he was and wished it were inside her. But her intention was to tease him, not fuck him. She didn't want any more puppies growing up in this world. Sure, Princess wasn't in heat, and therefore, couldn't get pregnant, but still. She didn't want to take the chance until she knew there were no more zombies in this desert. Not even one.

"Oh, Runt," Princess moaned. "You're so hard," she added in a voice that she knew would turn her mate's face red. And even though she couldn't see his flesh under his gray fur, Princess was sure that he was as red as tomato now. "Do you want me to get up so I can let you shove it in me…?" she added in a seductively, yet taunting voice. "I know how much you love being hopped on…" Then she brought up the bet he'd made when they were younger. "…and getting your dick sucked…I remember how you wanted me to suck your's when we met again after an entire year…I know you enjoyed it when I lost that bet and had to blow you…"

"Princess!" a male voice called. "Runt!" When Runt heard his name, and how urgent the caller sounded, he and his mate looked at each other's faces with shock. Princess immediately got off Runt and they ran together to the source of the voice. They saw it was Stinky.

"What's going on?" Princess asked him.

"Jackals," he almost growled. "Jackals like the one you drove off, Princess—those 'golden' ones. Claws and Fleet just spotted an entire pack of them not far from the oasis."

"No…" Runt gasped. Had Angel really helped her pack track his pack down by following his scent, which she was probably really familiar with after their encounter? Or was this their territory? They couldn't take any chances and had to stay out of sight until the jackals left.

"How could they have found us?" Princess asked her brother-in-law, Stinky.

"T-They followed my scent," Runt stammered. "Angel…she led tracked me…"

"How?" Stinky asked.

"She knows my scent too well after what happened between us…" Runt said, then cut off early. "…I never should have gone off alone that day, Princess. It may not end well…if anyone dies, I don't know how I'll live with myself…it'll be all my fault!"

"Enough, Runt," Princess scolded him. "It's not your fault just because she has your scent!"

"Yes it is!" he argued. "I could've stopped her from getting so close to me…"

That did it for Princess. She cuffed him across the head, but that seemed to bring the common sense Runt had lost back into him. "I'm sorry I had to hit you, but you needed that," Princess said.

"Don't apologize," Runt said. "I deserved it. But what are we going to do about the jackals? What if they did track us here? Then what?"

"What if they attack us?" Stinky added.

"We fight back," Princess said. "They won't expect us to be mostly Alphas who can fight. The Omegas will stay back to protect the young…except you Runt."

"Why me?" Her mate almost yelped, but suppressed the urge since he didn't want the jackals to know they were there, if they didn't already.

"Because I have trained you to fight like an Alpha," she said. "And we'll need all the wolves we can to fight the jackals, if it comes to that. Don't chicken out now. You're the only Omega here who can fight like an Alpha, now you will fight for your puppies and your family, Runt. What would you do if our second litter died only because you didn't fight."

"No!" Runt cried, picturing their six puppies being torn apart by the jackals. "No…don't say that…I'll fight! I'll fight!" And then he fell to the ground and covered his eyes with his paws as if to stop himself from seeing his puppies being torn apart in his nightmarish thought.

"Get up, Runt," Stinky said. "We must get back to the others so we can prepare the Alphas for the battle that could happy."

_I hate how I predicted this_, Runt thought, remembering how he'd told his parents that he was afraid that war with the jackals would happen. _And now it just might,_ he thought.

* * *

"What the hell's going on?" Melissa asked when Princess, Runt, and Stinky returned. "Claws said something about jackals but she was so frantic we barely understood what she meant."

"Jackals," Princess said, "have gathered at the northern side of the oasis. An entire pack of them. And Runt and I both know who they are. They're the pack of Angel, the she-jackal who tried taking advantage of Runt not long ago. Just because she'd warned us 'My father won't like to hear that,' Runt and I have our concerns about why they're here. Runt just knows that 'Angel' has followed his scent—and led her entire pack here to get revenge for me insulting her and threatening to take her life."

"I doubt that stuck up jackal took too kindly to being called a 'fucking whore'," Runt said.

"What are you suggestion?" Melissa asked.

"We take the war to them before they take the war to us," Kate said. "We cannot allow them to get the upper paw over us. If we strike first, we can easily defeat them."

But, in her heart, Kate knew that there would be death for both sides, and she almost shook with fear when she looked at Runt, her youngest son, and Mica, one of her youngest daughter-in-laws, who was the mate of Stinky, her oldest son.

All of the Alphas, plus the Betas Princess and Claws, and one Omega, Runt, all were gathered among the bush-like plants at the northern end of the oasis watching the pack of Golden Jackals.

Princess and Runt's hackles rose at the sight of Angel, that whore of a she-jackal who'd tried seducing Runt, and had caused tension between Princess and her young mate. Princess wanted to, so badly, to go down there, and mutilate that bitch for what she'd done and caused. Even when there would be a battle between the two packs—if the wolves' group could be called a pack, considering their low numbers—Angel was acting like the usual stuck up bitch Princess felt she was. Runt had told her about how Angel had called the she-wolves of their group "bitchy" and that had pissed Princess off so much that she'd almost cuffed Runt just for repeating it, even if he hadn't meant it.

But now, as they hid in these bushes, Princess was so anxiously about burying her fangs in Angel's flesh that she had to keep thinking about Runt in dirty ways to keep herself from giving their position away. It was best left unsaid what she was thinking about Runt, but it involved being on top of him, some vines, and a whole lot of thrusting on her part. But when it came to war, the last thing Princess would have on her mind would be fucking Runt or giving him head. She would be hell bent on killing Angel and as many other jackals as she could to drive them away from here. And, just like Kate, she was afraid that some of the wolves would die…as much as the two female Alpha wolves wanted to deny that fear, they wouldn't.

Kate felt terrible every time she glanced at Claws, fearing that something bad would happen to her close friend, who would probably be the strongest wolf here if it weren't for Princess's presence. And just as Kate feared that something horrible would happen to Claws while Princess feared that something horrible would happen to Runt and Mica. Because of her fear, Princess questioned her sanity for telling Runt to come with her for this battle, and for not saying anything to Mica to stop her from coming along. They were strong wolves, like Kate, but they didn't have as much experience as her or Princess, even if that was who had taught them. No student was ever as good as the teacher among wolves. Whereas Kate was probably the smartest and fastest of the survivors, Princess was the strongest, Claws was the bravest, Runt was probably the most useful of the survivors. He could do things that none of them could do, such as climbing trees and talking peace where any other Omega would fail. If any of them died, Runt would probably be the biggest lost. Even Winston and Tony, two of the oldest wolves around before they had died, had said that Runt was the most unique wolf they'd ever met in their lives. They'd never met a wolf who climbed trees and had such good peacemaking skills.

"They're coming this way," Claws whispered. "Give us the command to attack them and we will…"

"When they pass those two rocks there," Princess said, pointing at the two boulders that the wolves considered a "gate" with her right paw. "We'll attack them as soon as they reach there, even if it is just one jackal. Not before them but not after, either."

And the wolves' fears were confirmed when the jackals stopped near the two rocks and began talking about attacking the wolves. They could hear them talking about how, thanks to Angel, they'd followed Runt's scent all the way from where she'd seduced him.

That did it for the Alphas and they ran toward the pack of golden jackals, barking like a bunch of wild dogs. The jackals were surprised, having not known that the wolves had been watching them, and were so ready for battle, but still, they were just as ready to fight. But they didn't know how ready the wolves really were.

"Show them no mercy!" Princess commanded, as she led the running group of wolves toward the "invaders," with Kate, Claws, and Runt on either side of her.

"Where are you going?" Princess gasped when she saw Runt run off alone toward a lone she-jackal.

"After Angel!" he answered.

"Not alone, you're not!" Claws growled. "Come on!" she said to Princess and Kate. "He won't last without some help, at least."

And then the three she-wolves, who were much more experienced than Runt ever could be, took off after the brave Omega. But why was he going after Angel? Maybe because he wanted to kill her for the tension she'd caused between him and Princess. The three females couldn't think of any other reason but that.

"Oh, Runt," Angel greeted him in a voice that was anything but serious. "Nice to see you again. Did you come back to live up to my offer? If you come with me, this won't have to happen. Do you want to fuck me?"

"Go to Hell, you whore," Princess spat.

"I'm better off without you," Runt said. "I don't know what diseases you jackals carry."

"Not much more than you gray wolves do," Angel said. "Remember, we're more closely related than you think, Runt."

"You won't be related to anything when I'm done with you…" Princess threatened her. She was growling, with her teeth, fangs, and gums exposed. "I will tear you to pieces for what you did to Runt…"

"Don't be so bitchy," Angel spat. "You know he wanted me to blow him. It'd probably be better than any blowjob you ever gave him."

"YOU BITCH!" Princess roared. "I'll fucking tear you to pieces!" She lunged and landed atop the she-jackal, who threw Princess off by raising her back up so she ended up standing on her hind legs. But that was a mistake. Claws lunged, hitting Angel in her gut headfirst, and throwing them both to the ground. Claws got up immediately, but Angel seemed to lie there lifelessly as if she'd been killed. Claws felt as if she was being taunted and that pissed her off so much.

"Let me at her," Runt growled as he came over to Angel, as the other wolves fought with the rest of Angel's pack. "I know you want to do this, Princess…but she tried to ruin our marriage…I won't let that stand…"

Angel growled as if she were demon possessed and lunged suddenly. "If I can't have you, NO ONE WILL!" she roared. Her claws cut through the air and then the flesh of a gray wolf. Blood sprayed all over the she-wolves and Angel.

Princess froze with horror when she saw Runt fall on the ground in pool of blood. She ran to him as Kate and Claws stood there, just as horrified. Runt was dying. Princess knew that as she wrapped her front legs around his smaller body. Kate and Claws would've torn Angel apart by now if they knew how to react to this.

Runt's throat was slashed to deeply to save him. Not even Eve could save him, if she were still alive. But he tried to speak regardless, even though he coughed up blood with a disgusting gurgling sound. "P-Princess…"

"Don't speak…I-I can take you to Reba and Janice…Candy and Sweets…" Princess cried. "…t-they c-can save you…"

"No…they can't," he groaned. "I'm dying…you know that…" His breaths were more labored and the time between them increased with each one. "I'm sorry…about this…kill…Angel…" Then Runt's last words would be: "I…love...you…" And then he died in his mate's grasp.

"Runt!" Princess screamed. "Don't die…don't die…" She was in tears as she pressed on his chest, but her efforts were in vain. Nothing could be done to save him. But she would honor his last request by killing his murderer…that bitch of a jackal had killed her true love and Princess would spill her worthless blood all over the fucking desert!

"WHY?!" Princess roared as she went straight for Angel suddenly, who yelped with fear even though she felt no remorse over what she did to Runt. But her words were said in a mocking voice and would be Angel's last words before being pinned to the ground by Princess.

"No…no…" Angel begged. "Y-You can't do this to me!"

"Why not?" Princess snarled. "You murdered…murdered my mate…and now you will be murdered!"

"No!" Angel screamed just before feeling Princess's claws dig into her flesh, first splitting her throat open, and then going all the way down her until she'd been split open from her throat to her crotch. There was so much blood and her guts spilled out of her lifeless body when Princess tipped her over.

But now, with Angel dead, Princess now felt only sadness when she looked to see Runt's lifeless body. Kate was crying, with her body sprawled over that of her son. She was begging, wishing that he were just unconscious and not dead. How would Humphrey and Runt's puppies take this news? That Runt was dead. Claws was just as stunned as Kate and Princess were and she barely had any connection to Runt, in comparison to them.

"Oh, Runt," Princess moaned miserably as she joined Kate in crying over Runt's dead. Kate had lost a son, while Princess had lost a mate. And now, Princess was remembering all the good times she'd had with Runt...starting with that moment she'd first seen him at The Great Wolf Games when he was just a young adolescent wolf. She still remembered how he'd requested oral sex from her and she'd turned him away rather angrily. But then she'd made a bet regarding whether Claudette or Nars would win the race that had been going on at the time. Nars won and Princess had to give Runt what he'd wanted.

And, more than anything, Princess remembered the moment she'd married Runt, which was just before those fucking rogue wolves had captured them. Then she'd feared (for many days) that Runt had been killed by the rogues when she'd escaped, but then he'd turned out to be alive just before the final battle with King's pack. She remembered how, with the help of Lilly and Melissa, they'd killed both King and Queen, and that had led to the rogues fleeing Jasper Park to never return. And even when they'd been in Banff, she recalled one good memory she shared with Runt. That was when they'd mated, even though that had made their lives, in Banff, even more hellish than they had been before then.

Princess was in tears. "I love you," she wailed, "and I'll never forget you…I'm sorry I couldn't save you…"

* * *

Elsewhere, Stinky and his smaller Alpha mate, Mica, had been separated from the others during the battle with the pack of golden jackals. They had no idea that Angel had killed Runt and were just trying to keep from being killed, themselves.

"Mica!" Stinky barked. "How are we going to get out of this?"

"I don't know," Mica barked back. "But if we die, at least we'll die together!"

"We won't die!" he said loudly, as he tore a male jackal's throat out. "We'll stay alive as long as we fight."

"I don't know," she said darkly. "There's too many." Mica wasn't afraid, being an Alpha, but she truly didn't know how her and Stinky would survive this. They were surrounded by so many jackals that it was remarkable they were alive right now, after killing so many jackals. They figured these fuckers were toying with them before they killed the two gray wolves.

"There might be too many," Stinky growled as he killed yet another jackal, "but they sure don't know how to fight! Why are they attacking in twos and not all at once?"

"Oh, you want us to attack you all at once?" a larger male jackal roared. It was Angel's father, the Alpha male of this pack. "You heard them!"

"Stinky!" Mica roared. "Why did you have to say that?!" Then she added, when the Alpha male lunged at her, "Fuck!"

Stinky went insane when he saw the jackals' leader on top of Mica, trying to attack her as so many of his followers went after him. But five of them immediately received five slashed throats. The rest, at their leader's orders, stopped attacking and watched what went on. Stinky went for various weak points on their leader but he kept on biting at Mica's throat, as she kicked him in the belly with her claws extended. There was so much of the jackal leader's blood all over Mica because of Stinky and Mica's brutal attacks that he seemed to be ignoring as he went for Mica's throat.

Stinky and Mica both screamed when the massive jackal broke through Mica's defensive attacks. But the jackals, they just cheered as more blood flew. It was Mica's blood, as just as massive fangs dug into her throat. Stinky was cursing and screaming at him as he mutilated the male's back, as he mutilated Mica's throat. Then there was a ripping sound he tore out Mica's throat. There was a loud choking sound, then a low splattering sound as the jackal dropped Mica's torn out windpipe. There was a ragged chunk of blood flesh around it.

Stinky went into a rage and tried to tear out the throat of his mate's murder, but he was kicked, by that same jackal, in a place that really hurt before he could even attempt to save Mica's life. He laid on the hot sand, groaning in pain over being kicked between the legs by a wolf-like animal who was much larger than he was. He was also crying not only because of being kicked but do to witnessing his loving mate, who'd been through almost everything with him, get her throat torn out.

"Mica…" Stinky cried as the jackals took off, following their Alpha male. He was in so much pain, physically and mentally. "Oh, Mica…" he cried again as the other Alphas, and Princess and Claws, surrounded him.

"Pussies!" Claws was ranting. "You kill innocent wolves and run off like fucking pussies! Why the fuck don't you come back here and fight us one-on-one UNTIL YOU'RE ALL FUCKING DEAD!"

"Come back, you fucker!" Princess screamed. "Your daughter killed my mate!"

"Another time, she-wolf," the Alpha male of the jackals shouted back. "Another time...and we will kill many more of your group!"


	16. A Hunt Goes Bad

**Chapter 16**

**A Hunt Goes Bad**

Sam was the youngest of the survivors, next to Gemma and the second litter of puppies from his widowed mother Princess. And he was also one of the few Omega survivors from Jasper. The others were his grandfather Humphrey, Candy, Sweets, Reba, Janice, Gemma, and two of his still puppy brothers.

Of the three puppies born in Princess and Runt's first litter, Sam was the only Omega, and the youngest. And, like his now late father, he was a runt. Many of the other Omegas from his generation had once considered him to be one of the shyest Omegas ever born in Jasper. And just as many had insulted him due to being a runt and having a runt father. But when Princess had heard about those insults, from her youngest son himself, she'd gone after those wolves, and found them with their parents. Because their parents had been there, Princess had yelled at them instead, and then their parents had yelled at their children for bullying Sam just because of his, in their words, "condition." "Condition" was a term that always pissed Princess off when it was used in reference to Runt or Sam. It might've been true, that they were runts, but that didn't mean anyone had to talk about them in such a way.

It was about a month since Runt and Mica were killed by the jackals in a suddenly and brutal, but short, battle. Angel, the she-jackal who'd seduced Runt, and then killed him, was also killed—Princess had been the one who did that. Now, the wolves were on a hunt for food—not just for Runt's fatherless puppies but also for the entire group. It'd been a long time since they'd eaten a proper meal and they intended to find a few dama gazelle. But this time, Humphrey hadn't come with the group because he was afraid he'd ruin another hunt and be screamed at by Kate again. He didn't want to stress her out after Runt and Mica's brutal deaths. He was just as upset, but Kate was known to have mood swings when she was grieving. Sure, it'd been a month, but no one expected Kate, Princess, or Stinky to be over the brutal deaths of Runt—Princess's mate, and Kate's son—and Mica—Stinky's mate. But they hoped that a successful hunt would help them relieve some tension.

"There are three good-sized males!" Claws said as she ran alongside her good and long-time friend Princess. While they hadn't known each other during their adolescent days, despite both being former members of the Eastern Wolf Pack, they'd become very close after the war with the rogues had come to an end. They were as close of friends as Princess and Runt had been as close of mates.

It was Kate, Princess, and Claws who were leading the hunt now, being the smartest, fastest, and strongest wolves of those who were on this hunt—those three, plus Claudette, Stinky, Fleet, Magril, Melissa, Liam, Terra, Danny, and Sam. Even though Sam was an Omega, he wasn't like many others. Nor had his father. They were both smart wolves who could hunt as good as many Betas and Omegas. Runt had also been just as good of a hunter, unlike his father Humphrey. Humphrey knew next to nothing about hunting.

Princess ordered half of the Alphas to go to the right and the other half to go to the left. The Betas and Omegas, herself included, would keep chasing the three dama gazelle into a trap where the Alphas who'd gone to the right, and ahead of the three dama gazelle, would be waiting out of site to attack and kill them. It was a perfect plan, much better than the one from before. There hadn't been nearly as many wolves as before. There were at least twice as many as there had been then, which gave a much greater advantage.

_They won't get away this time,_ Kate thought, remembering how they'd gotten away because of Humphrey. She wasn't blaming her mate with that thought after how he'd been raped by Lilly, only because Garth had told her to, and then almost died of heatstroke. It had taken a lot of water from the oasis they'd found when he'd been missing to help him recover. Kate was grateful that Humphrey hadn't died. She didn't know how she'd survive without him. Mentally, that is. Their first serious conversation came back to her now, as she led the group that had gone to the left.

She remembered the following conversation from when she'd been afraid of dying during that dark time when her pack had been at war with the wolves from Banff. More specifically, she'd been worried about something happening to Humphrey, and how she wouldn't have survived without him there to protect her.

"Humphrey," Kate had said to him, in tears, "listen to me…I need you. You know this." She'd basically been scared shitless about losing her first and only true love. "I won't last one second without you, you're everything to me and I don't want to lose you. I'll die inside in out if something happens to you. I wouldn't even be here if it weren't for you, so please…promise me you'll survive. For you and me both…"

"I promise I'll never leave you," Humphrey had said then. "You're everything to me too. And I love you with all my heart and soul. I'll be with you till the day I die and that'll be from old age. I'll always protect you, Kate, and I'll die for you in a second if I have to. You're all that matters to me."

Upon remembering this, she couldn't believe that she'd screamed at the wolf who had said this to her years earlier. And Runt…she couldn't believe she'd screamed at poor Runt like that…and now he's dead! Kate was praying that he wasn't mad at her now that he was in Heaven. As she kept going left, with other wolves running behind her, she could see Sam, the youngest from Princess's first litter, running ahead of his group, the one on the right side, and being screamed at by her mother. He was running after a lone dama gazelle. He had run away from the other two, thinking that he'd be able to get away, but the gazelle had predicted that one of the wolves would go off alone to follow him.

Sam lost sight of the dama gazelle when he ran around a mound of sand. Sam thought he heard a sudden yelp, from the gazelle, but he didn't stop running until he had gone around the same mound. Then he saw a blood scene of a jackal, probably a female, eating away at the gazelle he'd been chasing not long before. And Sam wasn't the only witness to this gory slaughter of a torn out throat, ripped open belly with intestines and stomach stretched out of the gazelle's lifeless body. There was a female secretary bird, who had been following them for a while now, perched a cactus limb that had very few thorns on it. It was Cleopatra, the same one who'd told them all about the animals they could eat in this desert. It was because of her that they didn't kill any secretary bird.

Cleopatra and Sam both felt physically ill at this gory site. They were too stunned to move because they knew this wasn't any normal jackal. Sure, it was a female golden jackal, but it wasn't just any golden jackal. It was the same one who had murdered Runt only to be mutilated by Princess a minute later. Angel. Sam could tell he was here by the massive gash in her underbelly which some of her guts were still hanging out of. Princess had told him, as well as Terra and Danny, that she'd split Angel open from throat to belly, and spilled her guts out. So this could only mean one thing…she was a zombie! But how? Princess had said nothing about there being bites on Angel…unless maybe she'd been infected in another way. Any fluidic contact with an infected individual, whether a zombie or just infected, could result in infection. But maybe she'd been bitten in a place that they wouldn't notice such a wound.

"She got what she deserved," Sam muttered to Cleopatra, who agreed. They both knew that this is the she-jackal who murdered Sam's father. Princess had told them that.

"Quiet!" Cleopatra hissed at Sam. "These zombies can hear better than any living animal!"

But the secretary bird's warning had come too late. Far too late. An undead Angel had heard his muttering and she was now going for Sam, who was, in her undead mind, a fresh food source. Of course, Sam was stunned and too horrified to move, despite the bird's frantic screaming for him to run. She knew it was too late when she heard Sam screaming, after she'd covered her small eyes with her wings. Cleopatra re-opened her eyes to see Sam on his back, screaming, with the undead jackal tearing his leg apart. She knew there was nothing that could be done for him, now that he was bitten, and flew off to warn the others who were still going after the other two dama gazelle, most likely.

"Sam!" she was screaming as she flew over the group. "Zombie!"

All of the wolves stopped their hunt and looked up at the erratically flying bird.

"What?!" Princess screamed. "Where is it?"

"Just around the sand mound!" Cleopatra squawked, then flew back to where Sam had been bitten. The group of wolves followed her to that spot but they all stopped in their tracks when they saw that Sam's left hind leg had already been ate nearly to the bone by that zombie. And it pissed Princess off that the same jackal who'd killed Runt in life had now given her son a death sentence after her own death.

Princess went insane and immediately caved the zombie's skull in with the first large rock she could find. She acted so quickly that the other survivors hadn't seen it coming. Blood and brain matter went in all directions, but luckily didn't hit anyone in a way that could infect them. Even though the zombified form of Angel was now destroyed, Princess kept on crushing her skull with the rock until it was a bloody mess of bone fragments, blood, and brain. Princess hadn't stopped until she'd reduced Angel's undead skull to mush.

She dropped the rock, which was dripping with blood, and ran over to Sam, who was screaming in pain. The entire bone of his leg was revealed, except for small patches of flesh.

"Kill me!" Sam screamed. "Just kill me!" He was begging for his mother to crush his skull like she'd just done to Angel.

"No!" Princess wailed. "If we take your leg off fast enough…we can save you…" She paused to wipe away tears. "…the zombie already did the hard part: revealing your bone so I can…can break it off…"

"Just get it over with!" Sam screamed.

Princess returned with another rock, one that didn't have zombie blood on it because that wouldn't help save Sam's life, but only speed his infection along. It pained her to have to do something like this to her son who reminded her of Runt more than anyone, but she had no choice. It was better for him to have only three legs than for him to become a zombie.

She lifted the rock up carefully, as to not drop it on her own head and kill herself, and then slammed it down forcefully on her son's mutilated leg, which had been placed over another rock. There was a sickening snap that made Kate, Terra, Danny, and a few others puke immediately as Sam's leg broke off his body, and fell into the sand. He screamed in agony as blood gushed from his wound. But the bird, Cleopatra, had an idea that would stop the blood.

"It'll hurt like hell," Cleopatra was saying, "but the sand is hot enough to seal off his bleeding wound."

Sam screamed even louder when his mother and siblings guided him to the sand, where they carefully stuck his leg into the sand, which was over 100 degrees F. He felt his wound being sealed off but it was the worst pain he'd felt in his life, next to feeling and watching his leg being broken off by a good-sized rock.

Princess was in tears at the sight of her son having only three legs and a fourth leg which had a gruesome-looking burn on it where it'd been cauterized by the hot sand. "W-Will he turn into one of those z-zombies?" she asked the secretary bird.

"Time will tell," she said darkly. "I can't predict the future, but I hope your son will be lucky enough that he doesn't become one of them…"


	17. A Sudden Turning

**Chapter 17**

**A Sudden Turning**

"Sam seems to be doing much better," Candy told Princess. Since Eve's death, due to being bitten by the zombies, she had taken over as the main healer for the group of survivors, with Sweets, Reba, and Janice helping her if she needed help. "He's stabilized and we treated any infection in his leg with some unique plants Cleopatra helped find," she continued.

The "we" Candy was referring to was the wolves who'd once assisted Eve, but now assisted Candy, as well as the secretary bird who'd been useful in saving Sam's life.

"But i-is he infected?" Princess asked with a shaking voice. "I mean, he was bitten by one of the zombies…is he going to turn into one of them?"

"I think he would've started showing signs of infection if he was infected," Sweets said. "You saw how the health of Eve, Winston, and the other three deteriorated as time went by? That isn't happening to Sam, so we're sure that you took his infected leg off in time."

"However will we get around, though?" Janice, the older of the two vegetarians, asked. "He can't get around with just three legs without tiring out easily. How long will he even survive like this?" Then she apologized to Princess when she saw her in tears. "I didn't mean it like that, Princess," she continued. "I'm sure he'll be alright, but what if we have to move to somewhere safer because of the zombies or jackals?

'Will he survive the journey' is what I meant."

"He'll survive such a journey," Princess said almost bitterly. It angered her that Janice would say such a thing about her son. "He's one of my children, so he'll make it. It doesn't matter if he's a runt, I've always produced strong and healthy puppies with Runt." Then she thought darkly, _But someone won't make it if she says something like that about Sam again!_

Reba cut in. "But he is still in a lot of pain," she said, "and we don't know of any plants here that can treat pain."

"I do," Cleopatra said.

"Where?" Princess asked excitedly.

"Back in my nest," the secretary bird said. "I'll be quick about it," she added before flying southwest from the oasis at a rapid speed.

* * *

Cleopatra arrived at her nest, which was once the nest of an owl that had lived in a cactus, but had moved out when she went in and ate all her eggs and mate. Her own chicks were there, sleeping in a nest of down, the soft, fluffy feathers plucked from the breasts of birds. But she wasn't here to see them, as they were sleeping. She was here for those herbs that would hopefully ease Sam's pain.

She went to a piece of cactus that she'd placed at the back of the small room that the owl had built, moved it out of the way, and snatched up a bag of herbs she'd kept her for her own pains. They'd stopped altogether, but now there was someone else in pain who needed them. This situation made her glad that she'd kept them all this time.

"I hope I'm not too late," Cleopatra whispered to herself, referring to Sam's pain. She knew that some animals died because of how bad pain could get.

And then she flew back in the direction of the oasis, almost praying that the young wolf wouldn't kill over because of his excruciating pain.

* * *

When the secretary bird returned to the area in the oasis where the wolves had been resting, she swore she could hear wailing coming from the cave the wolves had put Sam in to rest.

"Oh no…" Cleopatra gasped and flew faster than ever.

When she flew into the cave, she discovered a horrifying site. There was one dead wolf—Sam—lying in a curled up heap with a caved in skull, and a bloody rock not far from his lifeless body. There was a trial of blood leading in his body's direction and a chunk of ragged flesh or two on the cave floor. Not far away, the bird saw Princess with her back toward the group. She was screaming her son's name in an agonizing way. And then there was a bleeding wolf between two others. That bleeding wolf was Magril, and her older brother Fleet was to her right. Claudette was to her left. Magril was bleeding from a good-sized bite on her neck and all three of them were crying. Liam, Magril's mate, was too horrified by this to even want to look at Magril because there was no way to avoid seeing the bite on her neck. He was in the corner with Claws and Melissa attempting to console him, but he just told them to fuck off and leave him alone. They didn't and he stopped telling them he just wanted to be alone.

"How could this have happened?!" Fleet almost screamed. "Why my little sister…?" He collapsed at Magril's side and started crying loudly. Claudette, however, was standing there as if she'd been frozen. She didn't even know how to react to something that would eventually take her sister-in-law away like it had taken her nephew, Sam, away. Princess had been forced to kill her own son, but she was too late—Magril had been bitten on a part of her body that couldn't be severed without killing her. It wasn't a limb wound or she would be willingly to have that limb severed. But she knew that…

"There's no hope for me," Magril said in a voice that just wasn't how she normally spoke. It was more serious and darker. The others would've thought Princess or Claws was speaking, not Magril. "I might as well just walk off into the desert and scream for the zombies to come and eat me. I'd rather be torn to pieces than turn into one of them."

"No…no…no!" Fleet barked repeatedly. "No! No! No! You're not dying! You're not dying!"

"Stop acting like a puppy and face reality, Fleet!" Magril snapped. "You know what this bite on my neck means as well as anyone else does! You saw what happened to Sam, Winston, Tony, Eve, Candu, and Hutch!"

"But i-it doesn't have to happen to you!" Fleet cried.

"Damn it, Fleet!" his sister exploded suddenly. "What do you expect to happen to me?! Me magically be alright and not turn into a fucking zombie?! If you believe that, you're not as smart of a wolf as I thought you were!"

"How can you say that to me, your brother?" he gasped. "I've always been there for you…"

"You're right. I shouldn't have said that, but you know it's true Fleet. I'm going to be undead just like so many others in at least a day…I don't want to leave you behind in a world like this, even if you can handle yourself better than I ever could, but you know I'll be dead soon…"

And she proved that to be true. Magril would disappear in the middle of the night and wouldn't be found until it was well past midnight. She was found by Fleet out in the desert, only ten feet from the oasis, with a sharp stone impaled in her skull.

He broke down into a weeping fit as the others approached him.

With the best intentions, Kate said, "At least she won't suffer now…become a zombie…"


	18. Oh Humphrey

**Chapter 18**

"**Oh…Humphrey…"**

"Do you think Runt has forgiven me?" Kate cried to her mate, Humphrey, who was the father of her murdered son. "I treated him so horribly not long before his death…and I never had a chance to tell him I was truly sorry."

"Of course he has," Humphrey said. "Why would he not forgive you?"

"I don't deserve to be forgiven for what I said," Kate said. "Not by you or by Runt." She laid down. "I don't even deserve to be your mate after what I said…I regret saying what I did to you and Runt as much as I love you both. I would rather die than know either of you are angry with me."

"I'm sure Runt isn't angry," he said. "He has no reason to be. You might have screamed at him, but he knows you didn't mean it. Before his death, Runt told me about how you'd said you didn't mean any of that. If anyone deserves to be the receiver of anger, it is me. I'm the one who ruined that hunt, so I deserved to get yelled at."

"No you don't," Kate said in a serious voice. "I never should've said those things. Runt was right—I was just like Queen and the other rogues. It was heartless of me to say that about you and Runt…and now he's dead…"

"You're nothing like her!" Humphrey gasped. "There is no comparing you and Queen!" He wanted to say that was like comparing him and Garth, but Humphrey knew better than to mention Garth around Kate since he'd killed Lilly. "And you aren't heartless…everyone makes mistakes…"

Kate cut him off. "What I did was no mistake," she said. "It was the biggest fuck-up in the world…" She started crying. "I shouldn't have said any of that…I deserve to burn in Hell for what I said to you and Runt."

"No!" Humphrey yelped. "Don't say that! What you said doesn't mean you deserve to burn! The only wolves that do deserve to burn are the rogues…"

"Then I deserve it since I'm just like Queen…"

"Stop it!" Humphrey barked. "Just stop it! You're nothing like Queen or any rogue but Princess and Melissa! Just stop it! Please…stop. I can't take it…seeing you acting like this. I love you and it kills me to see you comparing yourself to the rogues…they almost took Runt away from us all those years ago. And I almost lost you to them…"

Kate remembered that clearly. She'd run off to be along after hearing from Princess that Runt had been killed by the rogues after sacrificing himself for her. And she'd been found by King, Queen, and at least six other rogues who had gone ahead to scout the Western Territory before they attacked. Kate had fought King, but she'd been easily overpowered, and her throat had been mauled. She'd been found, an hour later, by Princess, Humphrey, Claudette, Stinky, and Melissa. They'd all feared she was dead from blood loss and had howled mournfully for her, even after Runt had showed up, alive and unharmed. But then Kate had waked up from her unconscious state and had been taken to her mother, Eve, to be taken care of. That was the closest she'd ever come to dying in her life and everyone hoped it never happened again. Kate still had nightmares about her dying, getting her throat torn out by King rather than just mauled.

Humphrey's statement had reminded her of how she'd almost been killed by King and she was horrified that she'd compared herself to the mate of the wolf who'd almost killed her. She would be dead if King had wanted to kill her and she had just compared herself to Queen, the dead mate of the dead wolf who'd almost killed her at least four years ago. Queen was a heartless bitch who felt no remorse about anything. Kate remembered how Runt had told him about Queen's brutal act of clawing his eye out and then eating it in one gulp. She hadn't even chewed it—she'd only swallowed the eyeball whole. Before his death, Runt had been haunted by that dark memory of, and the pain he'd felt, Queen clawing his right eyeball out. The flesh had grown over the empty socket and the pain had stopped, but nothing could've made him forget the feeling of getting his eye clawed out, and the even more horrifying sight of that same wolf swallowing it in one gulp. That was normal behavior of the rogues—it was common knowledge that they were cannibalistic. Kate and the other survivors who had gone to Banff remembered all the bloody skeletons, pieces of meat, and internal organs all over Banff when they'd gone there to rescue Runt back when he was just a puppy.

"You're right," Kate said, recalling all those dark memories involving the rogues. She shuddered greatly just thinking about how brutal the Banff wolves were. "I'm nothing like Queen…I would never tear another wolf's eye out and eat it like she did to Runt all those years ago. I could never bring myself to do that. The thought makes me sick. My stomach hurts enough as it is…"

"You haven't eaten well in a while," Humphrey said in a concerned voice. "Maybe I should go find you something."

"Alone?" Kate gasped. "You can't go out there alone with Angel's father wanting to avenge his daughter!"

"I won't go far from the oasis," he said, "I promise. I'll stay near the oasis so if I have to, I can get back to safety quickly. I won't take long. I'll catch you a few large birds and I'll bring them back to you to eat." He could tell that Kate hadn't eaten well in the past few days. She seemed skinnier, almost like how the Omegas used to be when they were considered the lowliest wolves in Jasper. So many Omegas had died of starvation back then, including Humphrey's parents and siblings. His family had gotten the worst of it. He had no one left, not even aunts, uncles, or cousins. They all died of starvation because he came from a family of only Omegas as far back as anyone could remember. Kate, their children, and their children's mates was all Humphrey had left. His entire biological family was dead and so were so of his relatives from his marriage to Kate—Runt, Mica, Magril, Lilly, Eve, Winston, and Tony.

"Just be careful," Kate whimpered. "I don't want anything bad to happen to you…and I don't want to lose you. Not after everything we've been through together…I've been through far too much with you to lose you now." Kate nuzzled Humphrey's chin by putting her head underneath his head and then she licked his throat gently with her tongue. Although her eyes were closed, she was crying over the throat of him going into danger just because she hadn't been eating enough. Kate had been making sure that everyone else got to eat before she did and it seemed to be having a negative effect on her body. "I love you," she added in a sad yet sincere voice. "Be careful out there…"

* * *

Humphrey went about three feet from the oasis where he knew there to be a nest of large birds, secretary bids like Cleopatra. Cleopatra now lived in the oasis with them, and never left it, so he wasn't worried about killing her. And she'd told the wolves that she had no family left but her chicks and they'd come to live in the oasis, with their mother's help. He knew the secretary birds could be quite aggressive, but Cleopatra had told him a way to easily kill them without getting hurt. He'd have to get the bird he wanted to kill all alone and then be quick about breaking its neck. And, being a wolf, Humphrey had powerful jaws that could easily break a bird's neck, even if it were four feet (1.3 meters) tall, and had a violent, yet defensive, attitude straight from Hell.

"There's the nest," Humphrey whispered to himself as he stalked across the hot sand. It was in a patch of earth that reminded him of the oasis they lived him. He could hear the birds talking to one another. It didn't matter to him what was being talked about. Humphrey just wanted to get his mate some food that she really needed. "And Kate's ticket to a good meal," he added in a humorous yet dark whisper. He licked his lips anxiously as he got closer to the nest, but before he even could attack one of the secretary birds, all Hell broke loose.

"Your daughter-in-law murdered my daughter!" Humphrey heard an aggressive male voice roar at him as he hesitantly got up, only to be slammed right back down by his attack.

Humphrey gasped when he saw it was Angel's father. But then he got angry at that statement. "You're the one who killed my daughter-in-law!" he snapped. "You tore her throat out…and your daughter killed my son!"

"They deserved it for being with scum like you!" the massive golden jackal roared. "You'll end up just like your daughter-in-law with your fucking throat torn out!"

And then Humphrey started screaming names of wolves that could easily kill this jackal. "CLAWS!" he screamed. "PRINCESS! MELISSA! THERE'S A JACKA-" And then he was silenced by a paw slammed down on his throat as well as a kick in a place that was better left unnamed. Humphrey almost screamed in agony, as best he could he could with a paw pressing down on his throat, due to the pain of being kicked. This fuckin' pussy seemed to enjoy giving low blows to wolves…he'd done the same thing to Stinky after tearing Mica's throat out when Stinky had attacked him. This pussy probably couldn't even fight a wolf as weak as Humphrey could on his own without striking a low blow or sneaking up on him like he had just now.

"Shut up, you worthless fuck," the jackal growled, "before I tear your throat out and eat it."

"I'll tell you what you can eat!" Humphrey snapped. "It's something you won't have anymore!" And then he kicked his kind legs toward the jackal's crotch. There was a spray of blood, then a bloodcurdling scream. Humphrey had castrated him, but that seemed to only enrage Angel's father. He began cursing and ranting at Humphrey as he dug his large claws into the gray wolf's flesh.

"Motherfucker!" Angel's father screamed as he bled. "You'll end up like your bitch of a daughter-in-law now!"

"You're the only bitch here now that you're without a dick!" Humphrey retorted. He normally didn't curse but he was pissed off because of his fucking jackal. Plain and simple. He was sick of this asshole talking shit about his deceased children—Runt and Mica! "Now take that severed thing and go fuck yourself with it!"

"YOU'RE DEAD JUST FOR SAYING THAT!" Angel's father roared and went for Humphrey with his fangs. He torn into Humphrey's shoulder right down to the bone before he bit into the side of his face and torn some of the hide and flesh off. Then he started clawing and kicking all over the next to defenseless gray wolf's body, spraying even more blood all over the sand.

When Angel's father was done with Humphrey, half his face was mutilated, as was one of his shoulders, and he was covered in bleeding bite and scratch marks. There was so much blood all over Humphrey, his attack, and the sand. But what happened next was something Angel's father wouldn't have expected.

"You motherfucker!" a female screamed as at least five she-wolves and two male wolves lunged at him out of seemingly nowhere. It was Kate who had shouted that profanity as the seven wolves relentless attacked their father's attacker. The group included Kate, Princess, Claws, Melissa, Claudette, Stinky, and Fleet. "You think you can just fucking attack a defenseless wolf you fucking pussy?!" Kate continued ranting and cursing at Angel's father, who was overwhelmed by all the wolves attacking him.

They were biting, clawing, and mutilating him all over his body. Claws had his throat in her horrifyingly powerful jaws and she was tugging at the flesh with all the strength she had in her body. Melissa was on his back, mutilating his neck to the point of exposing his spinal column. Princess had done the same to his back, which was more mutilated than his crotch was thanks to Humphrey's kick. Claudette and Stinky were tearing his legs apart so he couldn't get away. There were bits and pieces of bloody fragments of flesh all over the desert sand because of their brutality—the brutality of all the wolves. Fleet was probably even more brutal than both Claudette and Stinky because he was seething over the death of his sister Magril. He was tearing all the fur, and even some flesh, off of the jackal's chest. It was a gruesome sight, his exposed ribcage, but Fleet was acting on pure instinct—that of protecting his father where he'd failed to protect his brother and sister-in-law—Runt and Mica—and his biological sister—Magril. He refused to let another friend or relative being killed by these fucking jackals!

"Just die!" Princess roared. "Your bitch of a daughter murdered my mate and I killed her twice—once in life and once as a zombie! And you can fucking join her you fucking pussy jackal! I hope you fucking burn in Hell for the rest of your life with your fucking whore called Angel!"

"JUST...FUCKING...DIE!" Claws roared as she gave one last tug at his throat and then it came out with a sickening ripping sound. Blood sprayed all over Claws's orange face. She dropped the torn out throat as Angel's father dropped dead.

"We aren't finished with him yet," Kate snared. "We don't want him coming back like Angel did…" And then there was a sickening crushing sound as a rock was dropped on his head. Kate was the one who did it.

And then the mood changed entirely just as quickly as the wolves had gotten aggressive. Humphrey was bleeding heavily from so many wolves. They feared he could die from blood loss if they didn't get him back to Candy, Sweets, Reba, and Janice in the oasis in time. He'd already lost so much blood and it was no wonder he was motionless. But was he dead…? That was the question on everyone's mind as they gently lifted him onto Princess and Melissa's bodies to carry him back.

"Oh…Humphrey…" Kate cried. "…I-I knew this would happen…you shouldn't have gone off alone…" She was in tears and shedding more than any she'd ever shed in her life. "This is all my fault…I'm sorry…for this happening…and for how I treated you and Runt…" She screamed his name. "Oh, Humphrey, don't die on me…I won't be able to go on living without you…please don't die. Just hold on a little longer…Candy and the others….t-they can take care of you…just don't die, Humphrey! Humphrey…no…I wish I could trade places with you…I deserve to be dying more than you do…"


	19. Another Dead Omega

**Chapter 19**

**Another Dead Omega**

While Humphrey was off fetching food for Kate, Gemma was elsewhere in the decent-sized oasis relaxing. She'd been the first to discover the hot spring there and, quite often, she went there when she was stressed out. She was now alone, and wanted to be alone so she could relax. The reason she wanted to relax alone was due to all the recent death. And she hoped bathing in the very hot water would do that.

_Masturbating sure hadn't worked!_ Gemma thought angrily as she let herself sink in the water until she was up to her chin. The water was much hotter than she had expected it to be and it was bubbling due to the heat. She was pissed off because she had actually fucking considered masturbating! How the fuck could she have considered that after her mate turned into one of those fucking zombies and killed Magril just after Sam's mother was killed by Angel, one of fucking golden jackals! She fucking hated that stuck up bitch and hoped she was burning in Hell as Gemma thought about it! And she hoped her father was burning in Hell, too! That fucker killed Mica, so Gemma hoped that he would share the same fate, too!

"Oh…Sam…" Gemma cried to herself. "…Sam…oh, why'd you have to go off alone and get bitten…" She felt tears running down her face. "…what if I-I'm pregnant? W-What will I do without you?"

Gemma feared that she could be pregnant because she was one of many wolves who had mated at The Howling Rock before this shit had gone done. Gemma had loved Sam from the moment they had met when they hadn't even been adolescent wolves yet. They had been only three or four months old when they met and at least a year-and-a-half old when they had gotten married. And now Sam was dead only half a year after what both of them had called the best day of their life. Among many other things, being without Sam was one of the many things she considered to be her own personal Hell.

She had thought that Princess becoming a widow, after losing Runt to Angel, was bad enough, but now she was a widow herself after losing Sam! She and Princess could sympathize with each other and were probably closer than they ever had been before losing Runt and Sam. Princess might be her mother-in-law, but they hadn't really been all that close despite her being Sam's mate, but now that Sam was dead, they seemed to have come closer together when they had been mourning Runt and Sam's deaths. Their mother-daughter relationship was so much stronger, after the worst had happened, than it ever had been when both of their respective mates—one of whom, Sam, was Princess's youngest son—had been alive.

Although the hot, bubbling water was making Gemma feel so much better physically, it wasn't doing too much to make the grieving widow feel better psychology. Only time would heal those wounds—the psychological wounds of losing her mate and one of her closest friends. Gemma never would've expected that Sam would die so young, barely over two years old, and if he had, she never would've thought an undead jackal would be his killer. She would've expected a rogue from Banff to kill her mate before any kind of zombie did. Gemma had never known that zombies even existed before that first incident involving three bitten wolves—Salty, Shakey, and Mooch—turning into zombies before her and others' eyes. Gemma had been there with Claws, her adoptive parents Reba and Janice, Candy and Sweets, and Eve when it happened. She'd never forget seeing those three Omegas turn into zombies and she wouldn't forget seeing the same thing happen to her mate. And she wouldn't forget seeing Sam bite Magril and take a good-sized piece of flesh out of her throat. And then Magril had killed herself, so she wouldn't turn into a zombie like how Sam had, with a rock by busting her own skull to nothing but mush. Gory mush.

_This fucking places gives me the chills_, Gemma thought. She couldn't shake the horrible feeling she had, with the fog floating through the oasis, and how dark it was out. It was night and the only light source was a crescent moon, and that was mostly blocked out by the branches of the trees that made up the canopy of the oasis. The fog was all around Gemma as she attempted to relax in the hot spring and it caused another chill to go down her spine.

Not to mention how there were fragments of the trees—Gemma figured they were called leaves, too—blowing all around the clearing made the bad feeling Gemma had so much worse than it already was. The debris made an odd scratching sound as the desert wind blew it all around the clearing in a tornado-like shape made up entirely of leaves.

"Fuck this…" Gemma whispered in a shaking, nervous voice. "I'm not sticking around in this place all alone…" Then the crack of a tree branch made her freeze on the spot. It happened right when she had gotten on the bank of the hot spring, dripping wet and all hot feeling because of the water. Gemma was so tempted to get back in the water and hide in there until whatever had cracked the…whatever…left the area. She could hear it walking slowly as it got closer to the clearing where Gemma was shaking in fear. But what she heard and smelt next horrified her so badly that she couldn't take this anymore.

The sounds she heard now were the sound of something moaning incoherently. And that moaning made her realize that whatever was here wasn't just moving slowly but shambling. Shambling like the zombies! Moaning like the zombies! And the smell…that did it for Gemma. It was the scent of rotting, _dead_ flesh.

_Undead flesh..._Gemma thought. She was too scared to talk. And she knew that it would be very foolish for her to talk. These zombies could hear so well that they made living wolves seem deaf. _Fuck it!_ That didn't matter, Gemma realized. Even if it couldn't hear or see her, those zombies could still smell her!

_But how many are there?_ Gemma wondered. She hoped there was just one or two. The group could handle that. But if it were a horde…they wouldn't last. And even if they did, they would lose their safe haven. The wolves couldn't afford to be driven out of the oasis. It was the only one they had ever seen as long as they had been in this desert and without it, they wouldn't survive. They wouldn't survive to find another oasis, either. Some of them had barely made it to this oasis. Mostly the younger Omega wolves like Gemma and Sam, and the younger puppies of Princess and Runt as well.

Then she saw it. Just one lone zombie at the mouth between all the trees. It was shambling around, twisting its bloody and rotting head all around as it looked and smelled for prey. Its prey was Gemma, she just knew it was after her! Somehow, it had smelled her out. Gemma had no idea that the zombies' scent of smell was thirty times stronger than that of any wolf was. Not even Stinky's sense of smell could live up to that of a zombie. It was like comparing an insect's sense of smell to a wolf's sense of smell.

"W-What the fuck do I do?" Gemma asked herself in a whisper even though she didn't care if the zombie heard her or not. She knew it would hear her even if she whispered so quietly that she wouldn't even be able to hear herself. And even though she mostly smelled like hot water, nothing could mask her scent from a zombie. Not even if she had swam in a pool of what humans called perfume. There was no way to mask one's scent from the undead. Not even rolling in the blood and guts of a zombie could do that.

Gemma decided on what she should do. She just ran in the direction of the zombie. That was only because it was blocking the path back to where the other survivors were. She had no choice but to go that way. The scent of the zombie wolf's rotting flesh and the volume of its moaning was even louder than it had been. And she realized who that zombie was.

"Runt!" Gemma almost wailed. She could tell it was Runt, despite his partially rotting—and partially consumed—flesh. Patches of his gray fur were gone, exposing his dead flesh. One eye was gone and his belly was torn open. It was a small hole, but Gemma could see the blood dripping out of it as she ran by him. And her idea of running back Runt proved foolish. It wasn't because Runt wounded her in any way but she found herself surrounded by three other zombies—one to her right, one behind her, and one in front of her. They were all familiar wolves—Eve, Hutch, and Candu.

"No!" Gemma screamed as all four of them came closer to her. She felt the undead wolves' claws and teeth tear into her flesh, pulling her fur off of her body in certain places. And then she felt her flesh tear from her bones as she was ripped apart. Blood was everywhere as were large bits and pieces of her flesh was ripped off. She was still alive as the zombies tore fleshes of her flesh off her body, exposing her bones and internal organs. Her heart was still beating and much faster than it ever had been due to the pain she was feeling as her flesh was torn from her body. Patches of fur were missing in some places and patches of flesh were missing in others. Gemma screamed as her underbelly was torn open by an undead Runt, who ripped her intestines out and began eating them as the other three zombie wolves ate her flesh.

"Choke on 'em!" Gemma screamed as Runt tore her intestines entirely out of her body and one of her hind legs was ripped off. "Fucking choke on them!"

And then Gemma died as more of her flesh was torn off of her bones.

* * *

"Humphrey!" Kate screamed as the group of wolves who had "saved" Humphrey from Angel's father brought him back to the oasis. He was critically wounded and bleeding from multiple bites on his body. Not zombies, thankfully, but he may not survive anyway.

Humphrey was only alive because Kate, Claws, and many others had shown up just as Angel's father had been about to tear Humphrey's throat out. Claws was the one who tore his—Angel's father—throat out. And Kate was distraught over how Humphrey could die. And because she had screamed "I wish you were dead you filthy Omega!" at Humphrey not that long ago, Kate felt even worse than she had before this had happened. Just like how she had felt terrible for how Runt had been killed by Angel after screaming at Runt just as she'd screamed at her mate, Runt's father.

"Oh, dad," Claudette wailed. "Don't die…"

"Don't die, Humphrey!" Kate screamed. "Don't die! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I never should've called you a filthy Omega! The only filthy wolf here is me! I'm so stupid! I don't even deserve to have someone as caring as you are as my mate! You're too good for a heartless Alpha like me! I'm no better than Queen or any other female rogue!"

Stinky came over now, still barely over Mica's murder, and now he could lose his father, too. "Don't die, dad," he whimpered. "I already lost my mate and brother…I can't lose you, too…"

"I would switch places with you, Humphrey, if I could," Kate went on. "You don't deserve to be like this…I don't even deserve to be in the healthy condition I am after what I said to you…and you being like this…"

"You couldn't have known this would happen," Princess said, attempting to comfort her mother-in-law.

"I still shouldn't have treated Humphrey and Runt like that!" Kate screamed. "And Runt is dead before I could tell him I'm sorry! And now Humphrey may die, too!"

"I-I," Humphrey groaned and coughed up blood, "won't die on you…Kate…"

"GEMMA!"

The group heard Candy, Sweets, Reba, and Janice screaming, then they saw the four female Omega wolves running from the clearing where Gemma had gone to relax in the hot spring.

"What's wrong with Gemma?" Fleet asked, but he feared the answer. Everyone did, with how their luck had been going so far.

"Dead!" Janice screamed. "She's dead! Zombies torn her to pieces! Runt, Eve, Hutch, and Candu!"

"What?!" Claws screamed.

"Where are the zombies now?" Melissa yelped.

"Gone!" Reba cried. "They left after tearing our daughter to pieces! They left nothing but bones and guts!"

Kate looked at the vegetarians, then back at Humphrey who she feared would die. "Why is this happening to us?" she asked the group. "First, we lost Runt and Mica, then Magril and Sam, and now Gemma and Humphrey! Who's next?! WHO'S NEXT?!"


	20. Mother!

**Chapter 20**

"**Mother!"**

Something good at happened to the group of survivors from Jasper Park…finally. Humphrey not only survived being mauled by Angel's father but he made a shockingly fast recovering despite having his throat mauled. But that didn't that he had recovered spiritually. How could he with his youngest son, Runt, having been murdered by one of the golden jackals? And Mica, his daughter-in-law and Stinky's mate, was killed in that same bloody battle by the father of the jackal who murdered his son. And then his grandson, Sam, killed by the zombies, who returned as one of them to kill Magril, Humphrey's daughter-in-law. And then Gemma…his granddaughter-in-law was killed by the zombies. And the deaths of all their relatives had started with Lilly after she'd raped Humphrey per Garth's orders only to turn on Garth and have her paws mutilated by her own mate, and then killed by the zombies before Humphrey could save her. So much of his family was dying. Who would be next?

He couldn't think about that now. The wolves were on a hunt after so many that had gone wrong. The first hunt had only included Princess and Runt, and had also started the entire conflict with the pack of golden jackals that lived in this desert. A stuck up she-jackal called Angel had seduced Runt only to be driven off by Princess when she found Angel about to perform oral sex on Runt. She had also threatened the she-jackal with death. But Angel had returned her with father and some of her pack days later, leading to the murders of both Runt and Mica. Princess was a widow and Stinky a widower because of that battle. But Angel had been killed as well—Princess was her killer. She had, unfortunately, witnessed Runt's murder, and felt bad about being angry with him over what happened with Angel.

And Kate felt bad about screaming at Humphrey and Runt even more with all the bad things that happened to them. Kate had treated Runt poorly not long before his death and Humphrey not long before he was mauled by Angel's father, whom Claws had killed by tearing his throat out.

The memories of all the recent deaths were still in the living wolves' minds as they went out on this hunt. It was only Kate, Humphrey, Princess, Claudette, Stinky, Fleet, and Liam. The rest had stayed behind to watch over Princess's fatherless pups. Terra and Danny, Alphas from Princess and Runt's first litter, had stayed behind to watch over their little brothers and sisters. Claws had stayed behind as well because they needed at least one strong wolf to watch over the younger wolves.

"What are we going to hunt for this time?" Humphrey asked.

"Dama gazelle," Kate said, causing Humphrey to shudder at the memory of how they had been hunting a dama gazelle when Sam had been bitten by an undead Angel. "We need to get something that can keep our group well-fed for a while. Cleopatra and I were talking about where we could find them and she said there was a herd of them living not too far away from our oasis."

"Good," Humphrey said. "After what happened to me, I don't want to go too far away from the oasis. Not even if we're in a group…"

"You'll be alright," Kate said. "I won't let anything happen to you again." Kate nuzzled Humphrey's chin with the top of her head, then she moved back to the position at the front of the group she had been in originally. "If any of those damn jackals come near you again, I will rip them all apart."

"I hear them," Princess said, her ears perking up. "They're just around the bend…" Princess was up against a rock with Kate and Humphrey on either side of her now. Claudette, Stinky, Fleet, and Liam were on the sand hill behind the older wolves, waiting for the order from Kate to go after the gazelle.

"Wait," Kate said, sniffing the air. She swore she smelled rotting flesh and her hackles rose as a result.

"What is it, mother?" Stinky asked.

Kate looked behind the younger wolves to see a dead dama gazelle being eaten by a lion, not that she knew what a lion was. That explained the scent of rotting flesh. Kate relaxed. "Nothing but a dead gazelle and a big animal eating it," she said. "Let's just worry about getting our own meal." She paused. "Three…two…one…go," Kate whispered.

The group of wolves took off at once when Kate said "go," barking and yipping as they chased after the small group of dama gazelle. The group of gazelle bellowed with fear because they knew what it meant when anything ran after them, but they had never seen anything like these animals before. They were like the jackals only much larger and faster. They had larger teeth and claws than the jackals did.

And because there was a massive female secretary bird flying overhead of the wolves and gazelle, the gazelle were more frightened than they had been. Was that bird working with them on this hunt or just going along for an easy meal?

"Princess, Stinky, Fleet, go to the right," Kate commanded. "Humphrey, Liam, go up the middle. Claudette and I will go to the left. We'll surround a gazelle and take it down. They won't see it coming," she added.

And the wolves did just that. Princess led Stinky and Fleet to the right of Humphrey and Liam while Kate led Claudette to the left of Humphrey and Liam. The others couldn't tell, but Kate, Humphrey, and Princess were all thinking about Runt and Sam. Kate and Humphrey were also thinking about Lilly, who would still be alive if it wasn't for Garth mutilating her paws and leaving her for the zombie wolves that had attacked them after Lilly had raped Humphrey. She had turned on Garth, attacking him then freeing Humphrey from the vines he'd been tied up with. And Garth had mutilated her paws for betraying him. Humphrey had tried to save her, but she was ripped apart by the zombies before he had a chance to pull her to safety. Humphrey would've died then if it wasn't for Lilly and he hadn't been able to pay her back. His savior was dead and here he was alive despite having two close encounters with death.

"Jump, Humphrey, jump!" Kate ordered as she lunged for the gazelle. Two wolves followed. One of them was Humphrey while the other one was Princess. This time, they got the gazelle they were after, and the three wolves took it down with no trouble as the rest of the herd ran off bellowing in fear.

Kate buried her large fangs into the gazelle's neck, slashing its jugular vein with her front canines. The largest ones that were made for tearing flesh as she'd just done. The gazelle was dead in a matter of seconds. Kate licked up the blood, having not tasted blood or meat from prey ever since the plane had crashed into this desert a few weeks earlier. Her mouth was in heaven because of being able to finally taste blood after not having done so after so long.

"Ah, yes!" Kate almost moaned. "It's so good to finally get a taste of blood!"

"I agree!" Princess also moaned. "I never thought we would get to taste blood and meat again! Let's get this thing back to the oasis…"

The two females noticed that Stinky was growling. His ears, hackles, and tail were raised. He was showing his gums and fangs.

"Is something wrong, son?" Humphrey asked.

"I smell a zombie," Stinky growled.

"Are you sure it's not the gazelle that big cat was eating?" Claudette asked.

"Are you doubting my nose?!" Stinky gasped, offended. "And it's not a gazelle I smell—it's a wolf! And not just any wolf…" Stinky's voice trailed off.

"Who?" Princess asked.

"Eve," Stinky said.

"W-What?" Kate stammered. "M-Mother?"

"Where is she now?" Fleet asked.

"Not far away," Stinky said. "Maybe only a few feet away…and she's just around the bend…"

"Let's take her out," Liam growled. "One of those zombies took my Magril from me!"

"That's my mother you're talking about!" Kate snapped when an undead Eve shambled into view of the living wolves. "And she didn't kill Magril!" Kate turned to her undead mother, who was shambling toward the group. "Mother…oh, mother!"

"Kate," Humphrey said slowly, "you know what must be done…"

"No…no…" Kate cried. "S-She already died once…"

"But we can't let her go on like this!" Princess said. "Being one of those zombies is a worse fate than even death! If I ever become a zombie, I would want you to kill me immediately rather than let me live as one of those things for a minute!"

"She's right, mother," Claudette said. "Your mother wouldn't want to go on being like that…"

"I can't do it!" Kate shouted, then ran off crying. "I just can't do it!"

Everyone looked to Princess and Humphrey as their undead mother-in-law or grandmother shambled toward them.

"What?" Princess gasped.

"Just get it over with," Stinky begged. "End her suffering."

Princess looked at her brother and sister-in-law, then back at Eve. She noticed the large rock lying in the sand. "I'm going to be quick about it…" she said, taking up the rock.

"I'm sorry, Eve…" Princess said as she lifted the rock up in her front paws. She slammed in done and a loud crushing sound followed as it caved Eve's skull in. Blood and brain matter sprayed, thankfully not getting on Princess.

But Princess started screaming regardless. She couldn't believe that she just had done that to her own grandmother-in-law. She didn't care if it was a mercy killing—she had still done the last thing she would've expected to do in her life. No one ever expected to have to kill her undead relatives…and it was all too much for Princess.

She ran off crying and screaming just like Kate had, not even wanting to look back at the gory site she had basically caused. Princess just wanted to be alone with Terra, Danny, and her puppies for a while.


	21. Captured by Jackals

**Chapter 21**

**Captured by Jackals**

Claws was tired of just setting around on her ass and doing nothing to help the group while those who did help got killed, so she had decided to get out and look for water to group could drink for a while. Lilly's death had helped Humphrey find a few gourds that could be used to carry the water back in. Humphrey had hidden in a tent after Lilly had died to save his life. Thankfully, the gourds were all tied up together with a powerful rope that could be slung over Claws' back, allowing her to carry them with ease. And she could also hold onto the gourds by the same rope and dip them into the pond of the oasis.

The wolves didn't live in the middle of the massive oasis, which, surprisingly, was so far away from where they lived in the oasis that it was out of a wolf's hearing range. So if Claws happened to need assistance and call for them, the others wouldn't hear her. But Claws was a strong wolf, stronger than most of the others who were still alive. There were Alphas whose strength didn't match Claws. Princess was probably the one of the survivors who could overpower Claws. None of the other wolves, not even Kate, could say they were stronger than Claws was.

Claws found the pound that was located in the middle of the oasis. She knew the reason why they couldn't live here too well, even if she thought it was almost asinine. Kate had basically said that it would be too dangerous for them to live at the pond itself as that is near the area where Gemma was killed by an undead Runt. And it was also, most likely, the place where other animals, including those fucking golden jackals, could go to meet and socialize. Or just to get out of the brutal sun for a while and enjoy some cold water.

But Claws didn't want to just get water for the group, namely Princess' fatherless puppies, but she wanted to get away from the stress of everything that had happened recently. While she hadn't been _that_ close to all the deceased, except for Runt, as she was good friends with his mate, she felt bad for all of the others. And she also felt bad about how she had screamed at Scar for calling her a whole. She had told him to, in short, get lost and never come back. She felt bad about doing that because a lone wolf wouldn't survive in this desert. And because of the jackals out there holding a grudge against the wolves, they wouldn't hesitate to kill Scar if he was found. That is, if the desert temperatures combined with a possible lack of water hadn't already killed him off first. But no matter how he died, Claws would feel horrible about it as wolves were supposed to mate for life and always be together even through the worst times.

And now was the worst of times for Claws and all of the other Jasper wolves. And Claws had basically broken the one pack law that wasn't even official or set in stone. It was one that wolves followed only because their instinct as a pack animal told them to. They only left their mate for another wolf when he or she died. There weren't supposed to be any separations (or what humans called "divorces" or "breakups") among animals as loyal as wolves. Claws was shedding large tears for Scar because of what she had done as she looked into the pond at the oasis. The water she was supposed to get for the pups and a few others was a thought only at the back of her mind. She was mainly focused on Scar and whether he was still alive or not.

_If he's dead, I'll ever forgive myself_, Claws thought. _And I won't be able to go on living sanely if he is gone. We've know each other for so long…it would kill me if he died because I drove him off!_

Claws sniffed, wiped away her tears, and then took up the gourds by the vines, using her powerful jaws. She lowered her head down toward the water, dipping the three gourds underneath the surface in the process. There was a gurgling sound as water flowed into the gourds through the opening at the top of them. And Claws kept on crying as she listened to the sound of the water gurgling as it flowed into the gourds. She could tell by the weight that one of them was filled up so far, the second had filled about half way, and the third had filled about a quarter of the way already.

Claws felt her tears running down her face as she heard the last of the three gourds make an odd gurgling sound as it finished filling up with the water from the pond. It wasn't the same pond, the hot one that Gemma had bathed in before her death but a different one that was meant to be drunk out of rather than bathed in. Claws gave a powerful tug and pulled the three gourds out. Thankfully, very little of the water spilled out when she did that. Claws picked up them up by the vines and began to walk away, carrying them in the same fashion that she had before.

While she made her way back down the path in the oasis that led back to where the other survivors, Cleopatra included, lived, Claws had a bad feeling about something. She didn't know what it was, but she felt like she was being watched. Yet she had no idea what could be watching her. She wouldn't have such a nervous feeling if it were any of the fellow survivors or Cleopatra. In fact, it wasn't even a wolf that Claws believed to be watching her. She knew there weren't any other wolves in this desert and that none of the others would come after her so early. It worried her that she couldn't determine what was watching her by scent. There was no scent that Claws could pick up, which was strange considering that she was a wolf.

_What now?_ Claws wondered, growling lowly. She had her tail stuck up, her ears and hackles raised, and she was baring her fangs._ Better not be those fucking jackals…_

Claws' hackles rose even higher when she heard a twig snap, followed by the sound of something large walking through the foliage around her. Not just one of something large but also three or four of whatever it was. But when whatever these animals were got a bit closer, she could smell them.

"Jackals," Claws whispered nervously, then began backing away. She knew that one wolf, not even one as strong as her, could handle three or four jackals. And then she took off running, still carrying the water-filled gourds in her jaws by the vines that held them together. She wanted to get away, but she couldn't lose this water. It was too vital for Princess' pups. At least it didn't weigh that much, especially for a strong wolf like Claws. Claws said, "Fuck it," and then took off running at full speed. But that seemed to provoke the three jackals into giving chase. Two of them were males and one was a female.

Claws just knew that all three of them were Alpha jackals from the same pack that Angel and her father came from. And she was even more positive that the female was Angel's mother, coming to avenge the deaths of her daughter and mate. But if she got back to the group, these jackals would soon learn that they chose the rogue canids to fuck with. But Claws knew why, as she basically ran for her life, Angel's mother would be after her. Claws was the wolf who killed Angel's father when he had attacked Humphrey some time ago.

"You!" Angel's mother cried with grief. "You killed my mate! And your friend killed my daughter!"

"They deserved it!" Claws barked back at her coldly. "They fucking deserved it for what they did!"

"Get her!" the she-jackal screamed again. "We'll see how they like it to lose another of their own! But we won't kill her yet—we'll make her suffer before we kill her!"

And before Claws could even react or get away, she found herself being tackled by the three male jackals, whom easily held her to the ground. The water-filled gourds went flying through the air, but remarkably, barely any water spilled out of them. The way they landed on the ground played a large role in that.

"Three against one?!" Claws roared. "You are all fucking pussies! Fight like real wolves do!"

"Shut her up," the Alpha female jackal said. "Shove a rock down her throat if you must."

And the largest of the three males almost did just that. He put a rock so far down Claws' muzzle that it broke a few teeth out in the process and effectively prevented her from speaking. But that didn't stop her from mumbling all sorts of profanities and death threats at the jackals. Claws was one step from foaming at the mouth, she was so pissed off at them.

"Now let's get her back to our pack's territory," the she-jackal said with a growl, "before this bitch's pack comes looking for her."

"Fuck you!" Claws mumbled with a hellish snarl. "Fuck you all!"

"That may happen to you literally," one of the males said suggestively.

"Quick pestering the slave and get her up so we can leave!" the female roared. "Do you want to be caught by her pack while we're taking her away? Use your brains, you damn fools! Now come on before we get in more trouble with these wolves than we already are!"

Claws spit, cursed, and snarled as the jackals somehow managed to lift her onto the backs of the two larger males. And she kept on screaming profanities and death threats as they carried her away from the oasis and back toward their pack's territory, tied up with powerful vines the jackals had found nearby and had taken just for this purpose.


	22. Claws' Escape Thanks to the Undead

**Chapter 22**

**Claws' Escape Thanks to the Undead**

"Go to Hell!" Claws roared at the four jackals who were standing on all sides of her. "You can all go burn in Hell! Fucking jackal scum! Sons of bitches! Motherfuckers! Pussies!"

"Shut that whore up," Angel's mother snarled.

"Put a dick in your mouth," Claws roared, "and choke yourself with it!"

And as a result, Claws got a large wad of de-thorned cactus shoved in her mouth. But that didn't do anything to prevent her from ranting at the jackals. "YOU CAN ALL GO TO HELL!" Claws roared at the top of her longs. "And get these fucking vines off of me so I can tear all of your fucking throats out! Umph!" Claws grunted, then started tossing and turning wildly in a vain attempt to tear the vines using the cave floor. The jackals had taken Claws to the den of their Alpha female, after capturing her, in their pack's territory to keep her there as a slave. Their reason for that was to draw the rest of Claws' pack to their territory and then kill them all, Claws included.

"Can nothing shut her up?" Angel's mother complained bitterly.

"Getting a good mouthful of your throat before I tear it out will shut me up for a few sounds," Claws remarked darkly. "I'll tear your throat out just I did to your mate! And just like Princess did to your daughter! They both deserved it! And so will you when I sink my teeth into yours!"

"With what teeth you have left," a male jackal remarked insultingly. It was the same jackal who had shoved a rock into Claws' mouth, breaking a few of her teeth and one of her four fangs.

And just the sight of that wolf drove Claws made. She started ranting again as she foamed at the mouth, almost literally even though that was an exaggeration for anger. Claws started snapping her powerful jaws and kicking with her hind legs insanely, due to being on her back and having had her front legs tied behind her back with the vines. And she was shouting even more profanities now.

"Fucking fuckers!" Claws screamed, almost managing to bury her three remaining fangs into the flesh of Angel's mother. "Put your leg a little close, you coward, so I can bite it off!"

The jackals didn't reply as Claws began tossing and turning violently. More violently than she had before. Is she could succeed in getting on her belly, then she could get on her hind legs and lunge at one of these jackals. And she hoped it would be either Angel's mother or the fucker who had broken a few of her teeth.

_Yes!_ Claws thought triumphantly when she finally felt the vines loosening. And clearly, the jackals hadn't noticed it yet. _And that will be these fools' downfall._ Claws ten felt the vines slip out of her body when she shook one last time.

The jackals gasped in terror when they saw that Claws' efforts had finally paid off by getting herself freed from the vines. And the jackals didn't know how to react when a hellish, murderous look came over the wolf's face.

The first jackal to die was the large male who had broken Claws' teeth out with the rock. She had torn his throat out then dug out his eyes and impaled a sharp stone through his skull before he'd had a chance to react. And the only reason Claws did that last thing was to prevent him from turning into a zombie like Angel had after being killed by Princess.

"Kill her!" Angel's mother screamed. Both of the jackals on either side of their Alpha female lunged at Claws. But a sharp stone right between the eyes quickly took one of them out. And the other male found himself lying unconscious at the other end of the end of the Alpha female's den. But he wasn't unconscious, Claws realized now, she like she had thought originally—he was dead, a rock having busted the back of his head open.

And as Claws finally made her way over to Angel's mother, her teeth showing as she snarled, a chorus of agonizing screams distracted both of the female canines. They nearly forgot about each other's presence and ran to the mouth of the den. What they saw was a scene of slaughter straight out of Hell. There were at least twenty zombies, all tearing the pack of golden jackals to pieces. Blood was everywhere—many of the jackals were now nothing more than chunks of half-eaten flesh, blood, guts, and bones. The bones were what the undead wolves and jackals were tearing the flesh off of as they consumed the living wolves.

There was no way for Claws or Angel's mother to get away without being noticed by the zombies. At least none that Claws was aware of.

"Is there anywhere out of here without being seen by the zombies?" Claws asked urgently. She didn't care if she had to cooperate with a jackal, the enemy. The mother of the jackal who had killed the mate of her good friend Princess. Claws could worry about revenge later, once she had gotten away from the zombies.

"Why the hell would I tell you?!" Angel's mother snapped.

"Because if you go out that way, you're dead!" Claws shouted. "And I doubt you want to be ripped apart or turned into a zombie like the rest of your pack has been. And if you leave out another exit, I'll find it even if you don't want me to."

"Fine," the jackal growled. "Follow me."

Angel's mother ran over to the back of her cave, then slipped through an opening and Claws followed her without hesitation. It took both of the females to push a large rock over the entrance.

"This way," the jackal said. "This tunnel leads out to a sand dune that formed over a cave behind my den. We'll get away from the zombies there."

Claws and Angel's mother stuck together all the way through the tunnel until they saw sunlight again.

And when Claws began to walk away from the jackal, she cried out, "Don't leave me here alone! Where I go?"

"What does it matter to me?" Claws growled. "Your mate tried killing one of our own and your daughter killed our Alpha male! You really think his mate would accept you?"

"Then where will I go?" Angel's mother asked in a whimpering voice. "I have nothing left here!" She and Claws could no longer hear the screams of the other jackals, so they assumed the entire pack was dead.

"You won't go anywhere but Hell," Claws said. She let out a vicious snarl then attacked the only known survivor from this pack of jackals. Angel's mother didn't have a chance to beg for her left before Claws tore throat open. And she caved the jackal's skull in with a nearby stone so she wouldn't turn into a zombie like her daughter had. One less zombie to worry about. It seemed that all of the deceased become zombies even if they hadn't been bitten prior to death. Runt and Angel were both perfect examples.

Claws shook her head, then turned around with the intention to head back to the oasis. But she stopped walking when a massive bid landed in front of her. It was Cleopatra, the secretary bird who had befriended the Jasper wolves and proved useful to their survival.

"Where have you been?" the bird asked her. "Your pack is looking for you!"

Now that she had calmed down, Claws realized how bad her mouth was hurting because of the teeth that had been broken out by a jackal. It hurt severely for her to speak, but she managed.

"I was captured by the jackals of Angel's pack," she explained in a hurting tone. "But they're all dead because of the zombies—except for four that I killed, that is. I don't really want to speak…my mouth is killing me because one of them busted a few of my teeth out with a rock…"

"I understand," Cleopatra said. There was some shock in her voice. She couldn't believe what Claws had been through. "Just follow me, Claws—I'll lead you back to the others. You're safe now…"


	23. Return to Bad News

**Chapter 23**

**Return to Bad News**

Cleopatra was flying overhead of Claws as they headed back to the oasis, which wasn't located too far away from the jackals' territory. Claws had no idea what had happened there since she had been captured by the jackals, nor did Cleopatra after leaving to find out where Claws had gone. But they weren't worried about anything bad having happening at the oasis after what they had witnessed in the jackals' territory—most, if not all of, of the jackals killed by many zombies, if not every one of them in this desert. That alone told them that there was no danger posed to the survivors who were waiting for Claws and Cleopatra to return to the oasis.

Claws' gums were swollen and inflamed due to getting a few of her teeth broken out by the jackals when they had captured her. Her face was black-and-blue and her gums were red due to inflammation. And the pain she was experiencing was unspeakable. Literally. The she-wolf could barely speak, but if had been able to, she would be profanely ranting right now.

"How far until we're back at the oasis?" Claws asked in a voice tainted with pain. It was a low voice, as she couldn't speak very well due to her swollen and inflamed mouth.

"At least half an hour," the secretary bird called down to Claws, "at the pace we are traveling."

"Fuck." Claws let out a low, painful growl. "I wish had never gone off alone to look for water! Look at me now! A few broken out teeth, a swollen face, and inflamed gums!"

"Don't blame yourself," Cleopatra told her. "I don't blame you. I blame those damn jackals who took you. I've known about them for months—they always capture lone animals such as you. But you are the first to get out alive and get the better of them, even if it was thanks to the zombies. I'm glad they're all dead—bastards deserve it."

"I hope they're all burning in Hell," Claws growled. "Even if Hell is too good of a place for something as cruel as those jackals. I would have stuck around to catch those zombies tear them apart, but I wouldn't be here talking to you right now if I had."

"At least you're alive," Cleopatra said. "That's all that matters, at this point. The others will be relieved to learn that you're alive. And to learn that most, if not all of, the jackals are dead."

"And probably undead," Claws added darkly. "Some of them, anyway."

"Even becoming zombies is too good of a fate for those jackals, given what all they have done in the past," Cleopatra told them wolf, as they walked and flew back toward the oasis. They had been talking for several minutes now. "Killing some of your pack members, almost killing one, and capturing you is hardly the beginning of what all they have done. They killed my entire family—my parents, my mate, my chicks, my siblings…I have no one left because of them! I could go on to tell you about every single thing those jackals have done but we must get back to the oasis as fast as possible. I'll tell you more about those scumbags when you are somewhere safe."

"Safe?" Claws scoffed. "Nowhere is safe in this desert unless you are six feet under the ground. If you don't come back to life as a zombie, that is!"

"We're almost back to the oasis," Cleopatra said almost, almost sounding surprised about it. "We'll be there in only minutes—less than five, I'm sure."

"We've already been traveling for twenty minutes?" Claws almost gasped. Almost because she would've caused an excruciating pain for her jaws if she had gasped. "Good," she added, after getting over the brief surprise of hearing that.

"CLAWS!" A female voice, and then screaming, carried across the open terrain of the desert suddenly. Both Claws and Cleopatra heard it immediately.

"Was that Kate?" Cleopatra asked, a bit shocked and obviously concerned. She and Claws both heard that scream and assumed immediately that it was Kate. Neither of them knew how to describe the scream, regardless of who it belonged to, other than horrified.

Claws let out a howl, in a response to that scream, as best as she possibly could, given her oral injuries, so whoever had screamed could locate her and Cleopatra. But it wasn't the strongest howl Claws had let out in her life due to how badly her mouth was injured. She coughed and gagged loudly, painfully, after howling so weakly.

But it worked, at least, and that was all that mattered to Claws, even if it had been Hell for her mouth. The wolf, the one who had screamed, found Claws and Cleopatra seemingly immediately. It was Kate who had screamed but she wasn't alone. Humphrey and Princess were with her, on either side of their Alpha female. They all seemed to have, based on the expressions on their faces, just been through something horrible. Been through something hellish and almost unspeakable. Maybe worse than that, even! But that was why Claws and Cleopatra wanted to know what had happened, as neither of them had been there to witness whatever the others had just gone through.

"What happened?" Cleopatra asked hesitantly. She and Claws were both almost afraid to get an answer to that question.

"Four wolves were killed," Kate explained in a sad tone, as tears flowed down her yellow face. She held her head low to the ground, making it appear to Claws and Cleopatra that she was blaming herself for whatever had happened.

"What?!" Claws almost yelped, despite her pain. "How?"

"Zombies," Humphrey took over. "Five of them, all jackals, had been somewhere in the oasis for a while and we just found out about them the hard way…"

"Who was killed…?" Cleopatra was almost afraid to ask that, but she managed.

"Reba and Janice…" Princess began, only to find herself unable to finish her own sentence.

"…Candy and Sweets," Kate managed to finish.


	24. An Alpha's Twisted Thoughts

**Chapter 24:**

**An Alpha's Twisted Thoughts**

Garth was still alive, unlike his mate, Lilly. He knew she was dead because of what he had done to her. That was mutilated her all four of her feet just as a few of those zombie wolves had shown up. He and Lilly had captured Humphrey, and she had raped Humphrey to make him suffer mentally. Garth hoped he was feeling as if he had betrayed Kate by mating with another female, even if he hadn't wanted to. Garth had made Humphrey's life Hell then and he hoped he would have more chances to do so with what he had in store for the other survivors. And then that stupid bitch, after raping Humphrey, had a change of heart and saved Humphrey rather than letting her mate kill him like they had planned! And, if that hadn't been enough for Garth, Lilly had attacked him to help Humphrey escape. She had even managed to draw some blood from his shoulder before he had ripped her feet to shreds. But Lilly should have known, Garth believed, that a snowball stood a better chance in Hell than she stood against him, an Omega against an Alpha.

Garth didn't regret heavily wounding his own mate, whom he had once loved, for betraying him. He was glad that he had mutilated her feet and had even enjoyed hearing his _former_ mate's bloodcurdling screams when she had been ripped apart by five zombie wolves, who had once been her relatives or friends—Winston and Eve (her parents), Tony (her father-in-law), and her friends Hutch and Candu. Lilly's screaming and the sound of her flesh being stripped from her bones by the zombies had been music to his ears and he wished he could have recorded it to listen to it over and over again! Garth had savored and almost found pleasure from her agonizing screams and the sound of her being torn to shreds.

"She deserved all of that, too," Garth said to himself, as there was no one else here in this small oasis, located many miles from where the other wolves were. "I wish I had been able to stay there to watch them tear her flesh from her bones."

Lilly was dead, yes, but that didn't mean there weren't wolves who Garth believed needed to be killed as well. He believed that there were two, maybe three, wolves who needed to and deserved to be killed as well. First, there was Humphrey, who would already be dead if it weren't for his traitorous mate Lilly. Once again, Garth thought about how she deserved what she got, and hoped she went to Hell for it. The memory of Lilly betraying him to save Humphrey lingered in Garth's mind like a disease lingered in one's body, it irked him so badly. Garth wanted Humphrey dead because he believed that Kate, an Alpha, was too good of a wolf to be married to a lowly Omega wolf such as Humphrey. Garth believed that no Alpha should ever get pregnant with the pups of an Omega. At least not one as weak and silly as Humphrey. At least Lilly had acted more like an Alpha than Humphrey did, or at least that was what Garth believed. The fact that Humphrey had helped fight out two of those Alphas from Rabbit Poo Mountain to save Daria (a blind wolf who was driven away from her pack with her mother, who was later murdered), who was now deceased, a victim of the zombies, didn't mean anything to Garth. He believed that any wolf, even an Omega, could bite and claw at another. But he didn't know that Kate had trained Humphrey to be like an Alpha.

Then there was Claws, the only other Beta from Jasper Park other than Princess who was still alive. Not only would she prove to be even more trouble for Garth when and if he tried to kill anyone else from that group, Claws would also be a reason his plans would be ruined entirely. She was much stronger than Garth ever would be, Garth knew he would have to somehow get rid of Claws first or else he would be the only wolf killed. And there was only one way for him to successfully kill or heavily someone like Claws who was stronger than he was—he would have to get her through a sneak attack, when she least expected it. He would have to do something such as come up behind her when no one expected him to appear and break her back before anyone had a chance to react and save her.

Then there was Princess. She was probably the strongest wolf in the desert, even stronger than Claws, due to growing up under the rule of her controlling and brutal parents King and Queen. Princess was much stronger than both Claws and Garth were. In fact, she was stronger than Kate was, even. Garth had no idea how he would go about killing a wolf as powerful as Princess.

Of course, those three targets—Humphrey, Princess, and Claws—wouldn't be the only wolves to cause trouble for and try to ruin his plans. Kate and Humphrey's surviving children, stepchildren, and grandchildren would rather tear their own uncle limb-from-limb before allowing him to hurt Humphrey or anyone else in the group. And Garth knew that. He knew it _very_ well. Claudette and Stinky, for sure, wouldn't give a damn if Garth were their uncle. If he even laid a paw on their relatives or friends, they would make Garth wish he were in Hell.

Garth wasn't as despite or as rash in his decision-making as the rest of his group thought he was. He knew that Claudette and Stinky would also try to stop him because it was their father he would try to kill. So would Fleet, who was, due to being Claudette's mate, Kate and Humphrey's son-in-law. And Princess—she was their daughter-in-law due to being Runt's widow and mother of their two surviving pups, Terra and Danny. They wouldn't hesitate to rip his throat out either. Nor would Terra and Danny, the only surviving grandpups of Kate and Humphrey. Humphrey had told them about their uncle's heinous actions, even how he had convinced Lilly to rape him, and they no longer had an ounce of respect for him. Garth could easily figure that out without even having to be there to learn of it.

But Garth didn't care if he could possibly be going into a losing battle. He would at least try to kill Humphrey first. It irked Garth to end, knowing that a beautiful Alpha like Kate was married to a rough-looking Omega like Humphrey! He had always believed that she deserved better than Humphrey—much better! Not only as a husband but for their "private life"! No Omega could pleasure Kate like an Alpha could during a round of mating! It just didn't seem possible, or even slightly likely, in Garth's eyes. Kate deserved him, Garth believed, and not that worthless Omega called Humphrey. Humphrey was probably the only reason Kate had produced a runt in their first litter of puppies. Garth had never cared for Runt, due to being the runt of the litter, all that much and didn't care when he had seen his nephew wandering the desert as a blood-soaked zombie.

"She won't have that fuck when I'm done with him," Garth snarled. "Even if I die, I'll make sure I take Humphrey with me. If I can't have Kate as my mate, then no one will! I'll take her with me too, if I must!"


	25. Discussing the Undead

**Chapter 25:**

**Discussing the Undead**

Claws had just learned of what happened in the events that led up to the deaths of four of the Omegas—Candy, Sweets, Reba, and Janice. Kate had told her that, as she and Claudette had tended to Claws' wounded mouth, it had happened when those Reba and Janice had run off into the oasis, alone, to mourn Gemma's death. Candy and Sweets had decided to follow them and keep watch as the two friends had mourned their adopted daughter. But things had quickly gone bad when a few zombies, a mix of wolves and jackals, had entered the oasis, and killed the grieving parents immediately. Reba and Janice had refused to leave, claiming that they had no reason left to live without Gemma or their mates. So they had basically committed by suicide by zombie, allowing them to rip them apart. The only reaction Reba and Janice had to them was when they had been mutilated before Candy and Sweets' eyes, screaming in unimaginable pain as their guts and bones had been ripped out of their bodies after their flesh had been stripped from it like raw strips of meat. Blood and raw pieces of flesh.

Candy and Sweets had run, of course, but things hadn't gone much better for that pair of best friends, either. Because of a rock that had been in the middle of the path they had been running down, Candy had tripped and broken her ankle while running away. Sweets had tried to help her but failed and had to watch her oldest friend get stripped to the bone and mutilated just like Reba and Janice had only seconds earlier. But Sweets, although she had gotten away alive, suffered a but to her hind quarters when she had turned to run for her life again, after recovering from the shock of watching Candy get slaughtered. She had chosen to end it herself by going off alone, after telling the others about what happened to Candy, Reba, and Janice. Kate and the other survivors, even the six pups, still remembered hearing Sweets screaming as she had been ripped apart. She had let them kill her only so she wouldn't turn into one of them a day after suffering her bite. Their remains, what little was left of them anyway, had been buried nearby once the threat of zombie wolves had been taken care of by the Alphas in the group.

"Will we ever live in peace?" Claws complained. She was content with her jaw not hurting now thanks to Kate and Claudette having found some herbs in the nearby bushes in the oasis, but that had been the least of her concerns from the start, after hearing about the deaths of those four she-wolves. "If it's not jackals, it's zombies!"

"I don't know, Claws," Kate addressed her. "I truly don't know…"

"I'm beginning to hate dead things," Claws continued. "What's it called? Necro…" Claws didn't even know what the word for a fear of death things was.

"Necrophobia," Fleet finished for her. He was still grieving Magril's death. She had gotten bit by Sam, who had been bitten a day before her death, after he had turned. That had been while Cleopatra had gone out on a flight to locate an herb that would help Sam's pain. When the secretary bird had returned, Sam had gotten his skull crushed in and Magril had been bitten. That night, she had killed herself with a rock to prevent her own reanimation. He was glad that Claudette was still around or else he would have no one else to cry to over Magril's death at night. Claudette was the only reason he hadn't gone insane yet.

"Whatever," Claws said, deciding that she didn't care. "All I do know is: I hope we can find some way to stop these zombies eventually…before we are all killed by them."

"We won't be," Princess told her good friend.

"You didn't see what happened to those jackals when their territory got overrun," Claws argued. "They were all killed in no time. Not one of them stood a chance and there hadn't been all that many zombies in comparison."

"Those jackals are morons," Stinky growled. The word "jackal" immediately reminded him of what happened to Runt and Mica because of them. And what one of them had done to his father, Humphrey, shortly after that. "It's no wonder they all got killed and you were able to fool their Alpha female so easily." Stinky's voice turned more and more into a growl with every few words. "They all deserved to die for what they've done to us. I would've liked to watch them get ripped apart, too!"

"Calm, Stinky," Claudette told him. "They're gone and won't be able to harm any of us again. No reason to rant about them. At least not now, with them all dead."

"Or undead," Fleet remarked bitterly. He couldn't get the image of his little sister's dead body out his mind. Fleet remembered finding his little sister dead, curled up with her back towards him, and her skull crushed with a rock. He remembered the smell of her blood and the sight of her spilled-out brains lying not far away from her cracked-open head. Fleet couldn't bear the fact that Magril had died because of Sam's, her nephew-in-law, death and then reanimation minutes later. Magril had been standing not far away when he reanimated and Sam had gone for her throat. The only reason she had killed herself was so she wouldn't reanimate and kill someone close to her as a zombie.

"Fuck undead things," Fleet snarled and showed his teeth. "They took my sister…"

"Do you have any idea where these zombies could be at?" Claws asked Kate and Humphrey. "Why is it that we don't always see them and they seem to come out of nowhere?"

Kate had to think about that for a minute or two. "Neither of us really knows," she said slowly, "but Humphrey does have an idea as to where they could possibly go."

"Where?" Princess asked.

"Well, have you heard those loud noises at night?" Humphrey asked the group. They all nodded except for Fleet, who was crying with his face buried in the fur on Claudette's breast. "Well, I suspect that is coming from a cave where humans are mining."

"Your point?" Claws asked pointedly.

"Well, the zombies are drawn to noise, so most of them are probably in the area around that cave," Humphrey explained. "And if there are humans there…"

"…then there might a way to deal with these zombies!" Terra exclaimed suddenly. Princess, her mother, and Danny, her brother, were on either side of her. It hurt them severely to be here without Runt and Sam.

"You may be right, Terra," Humphrey said. "I could swear to hearing more than just the machinery and explosives they use for mining…I may have heard gunshots many times as well."

"Maybe they've killed most of those fuckers," Fleet growled again. "I hope I get some of their blood on my paws for what they did to Magril…" And he collapsed into a fit of crying again before burying his face in Claudette's breast fur once more.

"When will we go to this cave?" Danny asked.

"First thing in the morning," Kate answered immediately. "Tonight, we should all get some sleep, if we can. I sense tomorrow may be rough for all of us…"


	26. The Diamond Mine

**Chapter 26:**

**The Diamond Mine**

All of the wolves who had been living in the oasis were trying to find the source of the sounds of machinery, the explosions, and the gunshots. Kate and Humphrey were leading the group in the direction those sounds had been coming from. It was midday and the sun was high in the sky. The wolves were hoping to find the source of those sounds as it could mean humans. And the sound that was possibly gunshots possibly meant that they humans were aware of the zombie threat and destroying any zombies they saw. That or they were shooting at animals wandering into their territory, as wolves would call it.

But they hadn't heard of any of those three sounds since last night. Not only was that fact concerning to the wolves, it was also now more difficult than ever for them to locate where the noises had been coming from the previous night.

The six young pups, those who were from the second litter of Princess and Runt, started whimpering when the group came across blood on the sand. It started as nothing more than miniscule speckles but, as they headed further in the direction that they assumed they sounds had been coming from, the speckles slowly began turning into larger droplets of blood. The wolves quickly came across massive pools of blood, which had soaked into the hot sand, staining it a darker brown color unique to dried blood. And those pools of blood eventually began turning into all forms of gore—blood and guts, torn-off and half-eaten limbs, half eaten corpses…all belonging to humans.

There were also all sorts of long guns—rifles, shotguns, and even a few assault rifles—lying around in the bloodied sand. Many of them, if not all, were dripping with blood. Some of the severed arms still had pistols—both semi-auto and revolver—in their grasps still. Their cold, dead grasps. And their pistols were blood as well. Chunks of flesh were all of the sand. There were pools of blood for as far as the wolves could see.

"Look away," Terra said to her six younger siblings, all of whom were still puppies covered in a mix of fuzz and fur. "You don't need to see any more of this than what you already did."

"What happened?" Michelle, the oldest one, whimpered. She was crying, as were the other puppies.

"Don't worry about that," Danny instructed. "Just come along—none of you need to see any more of this."

"There's the cave," Fleet said suddenly.

"Why don't we just leave?" Claudette asked. "Look around. Does all of this tell you anything good happened to these humans? Does it tell you that there is even a chance of any of them still being alive?"

"There is, actually," Kate said. "Look at the small distances between the foot prints. You can tell that some humans ran into the cave. Zombies, wolf or not, can't run. And it's several of them—not just one."

"What are you say, Kate?" Melissa asked. She was a bit stunned and hit with disbelief.

"She's saying that we must find those humans," Humphrey explained. "Judging by the sounds—of the explosives—we heard last night, these humans are our only chance to rid ourselves of the zombies for good. We have to take the chance, for our sake. We may not survive much longer if we don't end this _now_."

Kate took over. "I can hear many moans coming from within the cave," she said. "If sounds as if most, if not all, of the zombies are in there right now. And if there are still humans, even if it's only one, alive in there with their explosives…we can end this all now and blow the zombies all to Hell."

"Fine," Princess growled. She didn't want any part of this, but saw no other option either. "But we're not all going in there. Only half of us. I want Terra and Danny to stay here with the pups. Claudette and Stinky, I want you to stay with them as well. Your parents, Claws, Fleet, Melissa, and I will go in there, find this human, and make sure it ends here. Then we'll _all_ get out of there alive and unharmed before the cave becomes a ball of fire, if everything goes as planned."

Princess approached her eight fatherless children, two of whom were almost adults, and six of whom were still puppies.

"Please be careful in there, Mom," Terra said, almost crying at the thought of losing her mother. They had already lost Runt, their father. "We lost Dad and Sam…"

"…and we don't want to lose you, too," Danny finished for his sister, who had begun weeping after uttering her little brother's name.

"I love you both," Princess told them. "And I love the six of you, too," she told the six puppies, who were almost crying as well. "I'll be careful in there. I promise. You'll see us all very soon, whether things go as planned or not."

The six wolves—Kate, Humphrey, Princess, Claws, Fleet, and Melissa—were the strongest members of the group, and that was why they had chose to go in the cave while everyone else waited outside. It was the best and smartest choice for these six wolves to go into the cave, and for the other ten wolves to wait outside for them to return. It was pitch black in the cave—no lights at all, as they had died due to a sudden power outage. But darkness hardly bothered the wolves, a species that had powerful nocturnal vision, meaning that they could easily see in the dark as well as they could see during the day. It wasn't any different, in terms of what they could see, for wolves, whether they traveled during the day or at night.

The wolves used their just as powerful sense of smell to determine what way the humans had gone. And it was easy for them to differentiate between the scent of the zombies and the living that was still in the cave. They followed the bloody footprints as well, as that was the best and most accurate way to track something. Not by following the scent but by following the footprints. The group froze when they saw blood. It wasn't the footsteps but blood that told the wolves there had been a struggle and humans were killed. The amount of blood was massive. More than they had ever seen for all the time they had been in this desert. And the gore…they saw an endless amount of gore, something that told them that the zombies had found the humans, and ripped them all to pieces. The wolves feared their plans would be in vain now.

"More blood," Fleet whispered. "And…" He couldn't finish his sentence when he saw the piles and trails of gore leading deeper into the mine.

"A trail of blood and gore…" Melissa whispered. "It just keeps going further and further into the cave…"

"And I hear voices," Claws whispered. "Whispering. Belonging to just one thing. A human, and he's ranting to himself…"

"What?" Humphrey asked urgently, when Claws stopped talking. "What is it?"

"He's ranting to himself about 'blowing the cave straight to Hell and taking all of them with him'," Melissa finished for Claws.

The wolves suddenly felt a stronger scent of rotting flesh and death hit their noses. Their hackles rose with their feel but their morale sank lower than it ever had. They knew immediately what had found them.

"Fuck!" Claws gasped. "They found us! Zombies are coming into the cave!"

The six wolves turned to the mouth of the mine. There were many zombies blocking it, blocking the only known way out of the mine, as they appeared not only through the entrance but also through the other corridors that went deeper into the mine. Of course, they were only moving toward the living wolves at a shambling pace, but they outnumbered those wolves three-to-one. There were at least eighteen zombies, both jackals and wolves, shambling toward the smaller group.

But what about the others? That was what these six wondered. They had left the other ten just outside of the mine entrance through which the zombies were entering.

"RUN!" Princess screamed. "Run for your lives! There has to be another way out of here! All caverns have at least two entrances!"

"What about the others?" Humphrey cried.

"Come on, Humphrey!" Kate yelled. "You didn't hear them screaming like what he heard Gemma and the others these things killed, so they're fine! Everyone, just follow me! I can hear wind blowing and smell fresh air down this way!"

"WOLVES!" a voice roared. It was clearly that of a human, a male one. It was the same man that Claws and Melissa had heard ranting about blowing the cave to Hell. He was speaking the English language but had a thick African accent. The wolves, who had been running only briefly before hearing him roar at them, almost froze over the sight of the long gun he had. It was an assault rifle, an AK-47, not that any of them knew that.

"Now what?!" Fleet screamed. "Get shot by him or ripped apart by zombies?!"

"OUT!" the man roared at them again, as if he could understand what they were staying. And as if he believed they could understand him as well. But neither was true, but only speculations they both had due to the fear they were all experiencing. "Get out, wolves! I'm blowing them all to Hell!"

It was only just now, as the wolves intended to run, that Kate, and the others, saw blood pouring from a decent-sized wound on the man's right arm, near the hand that was over the trigger on his gun. It was a bite, inflicted by a wolf. An undead one.

"He's bitten!" Kate gasped.

"Go!" Humphrey barked. "We have to get out of here!"

"I can see the light shining through another opening!" Melissa yelled. "Just run for it!"

The wolves, in that moment, ran faster now than they ever had in their lives before now. And they got out of the medium-sized diamond mine in seemingly no time at all. Not one of them could even remember running through the cave, due to how much fear had been and still was flowing through their veins. It was as if they had all blacked out as they had run through the mine, and only just recovered from blacking out when they saw sunlight all around them once more.

Although, at first, they didn't realize that there wasn't six of them, but only five, hiding behind a rock that would surely take the impact of the explosion, they soon found out when Kate took a head count. But, as soon as they realized it, as the five wolves breathed heavy gasps and heard twenty sets of paws running towards them from around the bend, they heard a scream. It was blood chilling and came from within the diamond mine.

"NO!" It was Melissa. They all knew that immediately, including the ten wolves who were still trying to get around the bend to the others. Every survivor who was still alive, outside the cave, which was all of them who had come here other than Melissa, had heard her scream, and knew who it was immediately. "Get away! Just get away! No—" Melissa was silenced suddenly and her voice replaced with a loud ripping sound that hit the other wolves' hears. It was the sound of Melissa's flesh being ripped by the claws and teeth of the undead wolves and jackals. That sound occurred as her flesh was torn from her body in blood and raw strips, sending blood all over the narrow corridor within the mine.

"Melissa!" Princess wailed then almost rushed back into the cave to save her own friend, even if she knew that doing so would be in cave at this point. She knew it was too late to save Melissa but Princess had acted only on instinct and adrenaline, not using common sense. The screaming and the sounds of tearing flesh told Princess that no one could save Melissa now but her mind wouldn't let her accept that fact. Kate and Fleet pulled Princess away, almost begging for her to not go back in there as they did so.

All five of the wolves who were or had been hiding behind the rock screamed at the top of their lungs when a loud explosion rang out from within the mine. Rocks shattered and ruptured as the dynamite went off, taking not only most of the mine with it but all of the zombies and a suffering Melissa as well. And it happened just as Kate, Princess, and Fleet got behind the boulder, which remarkably managed to withstand the explosion. And no one else was killed other than Melissa, who went through Hell in her final moments of life.

For what felt like hours for the five wolves who had been so close to the sound of the explosion, their ears rang because of the loud volume of that explosion. But the ringing in their ears only lasted for a few minutes, in reality. The ringing in their ears finally stopped and the five of them, just as suddenly, found themselves being surrounded by the ten survivors, including the puppies. None of them were wounded or killed in the minutes between the other six separating to search the mine.

Kate, Humphrey, and Princess were blaming themselves for Melissa's death as they had made the decision to go into the cave. And it was a decision they wouldn't have had to make as the last surviving human had intended to blowing the cave up whether they had gone into it or not. They blamed themselves for Melissa's death not only because it had happened but also because it was in vain and a senseless death. She shouldn't have gotten killed. That was what they believed, even if the others told them to stop blaming themselves.

"It's over!" Kate exclaimed, even if she felt responsible for Melissa's death. "The zombies are all destroyed!"

"W-Where's Melissa?" Claudette stammered, having not been there to hear her parents and Princess blaming themselves for her death.

"She didn't make it," Princess almost wailed with grief and guilt for her good and old friend. The grief was because she couldn't accept that Melissa was dead and had suffered horribly before being burned to a crisp in the explosion. The guilt was, again, because she believed that she was partially responsible for Melissa's death. "The zombies got to her before she could get out of the cave…we never should have gone in there. She died for nothing and it's all our fault," she added, referring to Kate, Humphrey, and herself. Princess wiped away tears with her paw as her children embraced her whenever they could find a spot to do so. "It's all over…but I wish your father and all the others were here to see it…"


	27. The Last Threat

**Chapter 27:**

**The Last Threat**

The wolves had not yet left the area outside of the now devastated diamond mind not only because of how some of them were exhausted due to what had occurred within the mine but also because Princess was still grieving over the loss of her Melissa. She had not felt this lost, for as long as the wolves had been living in this desert, since she had lost her mate, Runt, to the jackals and her youngest son, Sam, to the zombies. She had lost her oldest friend, Melissa, and still believed that she was to blame for Melissa's death because she had made the decision to lead the wolves into the mind, only to learn that they had not needed to go in there to get all the zombies destroyed.

"It's not your fault, Mom," Terra told her mother. She, Danny, and the six puppies were all around their mother. The other wolves were not too far way. While Princess grieved and was consoled by her older children, the other survivors were having a discussion of their own. It was about a wolf whom they had not seen since he and his now dead mate were driven away for their actions, except in the case of Humphrey. He had not seen him since that wolf had caused him to be raped by his mate, whom that twisted wolf later killed. They were talking about Garth.

"Could Garth still be alive?" Fleet asked. "Is there even any chance at all?" His voice was killed with dread. Fleet dreaded the moment when this group of wolves would encounter Garth once again, if he were still alive.

"I have a gut feeling he is," Kate answered with a growl. "Scum like Garth are never dead when you want and expect them to be. We'll never be able to truly go on with our lives without worrying about our safety. It's no longer because of the zombies or the jackals but only because of Garth. He is the last threat to all of us and he has to be killed if we are to finally live peaceful lives here."

"What are you saying, Mom?" Claudette asked.

"I'm saying that we will all wait here until Garth finds us," Kate explained. "That is the best way to have him follow our tracks. And when he finally does find us…I'll change him to fight. I don't want any of you to get involved unless you absolutely must. Garth won't be ready to fight with me. He is weak and is far from being the better Alpha in every way."

"What if none of us have a chance to get involved…" Stinky said hesitantly. The thought scared the hell out of him. "…before Garth kills you?"

"He won't get the chance," Kate growled. The thought of finally killing Garth—the heartless fucker who killed her little sister for doing the right thing by saving Humphrey's life—made her get very anxious in a violent way. A very violent way. The thoughts going through her mind were so violent that the others would think they were looking at Eve if they were able to read her mind. "Garth is a pussy. If he does actually show up and want to fight, I will make Garth my bitch then rip his damn throat out."

"The only bitches here are you stupid females," the group heard a male voice said. They all knew who it was right away, before even seeing him. Garth. He must have been listening in on them the entire time. "I'll accept your challenge," Garth said to Kate as he approached her, "and all of your terms. But I'll rip your throat out regardless."

Princess' hackles rose at the sight of Garth. She turned to her children. "Terra, Danny, get the pups to a safe distance," Princess said. "Claudette, go with them."

"Fucker!" Claws roared unexpectedly, before they even had a chance to leave. "I have had enough of you. To hell with what Kate wants and says. I'll kill you myself before she gets the chance to."

"Just you try it," Garth snarled.

Claws took that as a challenge and she lunged at Garth immediately. But he had expected her to do that and moved out of the way, causing Claws to crash right into the ground behind him. She got a mouthful of sand rather than a mouthful of Garth's throat. Now, Garth went for Claws. Everyone gasped and froze when blood stained the sand red. But they were just as shocked when they realized that it was more than just Claws' blood. She was bleeding from a few minor claw marks in her breast and none of her group was her savior. The wolf attacking Garth, who was also the one who had wounded him on the face, was one whom they had not thought as still alive.

It was Scar, Claws' mate who had left the group after an argument with Claws. But the others had not known that Scar had been following them ever since he had left the group. He had stayed far away to avoid being detected by them yet he had followed close enough to be able to track them still. But when Scar had overheard Garth ranting about killing Claws and many others just to get to help, he knew he would have to help them eventually. And he had done so not a moment too soon. Claws would have died if Scar had not intervened and stopped Garth's attack.

"I never did like you, Garth," Scar spat as he and Garth snarled at each other. Scar was the only thing blocking Garth from getting to his wounded and almost defenseless mate. Scar had just realized that she had also suffered a wound to her leg, which was more severe and prevented her from running away. "You are just like how your father used to be. No, you're worse. But at least Tony managed to realize what he did was wrong. You won't ever learn right from wrong not only because you have no way to know any different but because I won't give you the chance to learn it. I will personally make sure you die here and go straight to Hell!"

"Hell is what i will make your worthless life before I end it," Garth growled. "Just like I did to Lilly for saving _him_." Everyone knew that Garth was referring to Humphrey. But Scar was not shaken by Garth's threat. He sounded like another bullshit statement to him, as usual. Garth had always been an all talk, no action kind of wolf, despite being an Alpha. Scar, a Beta, had done more for the Eastern Pack than Garth, an Alpha, ever had before its unity with the Western Pack. "Let me kill him and take Kate as my mate, then there will only have to be one wolf who dies."

"You're right," Scar said. "Only will wolf will die." Garth almost smiled but what Scar said next caused that smile to go away quickly. "And it won't be Humphrey. It will be you, Garth, you fucking pussy. You worthless excuse of a wolf and an Alpha. You don't deserve to be addressed as either. You are no wolf, you're just nothing. You're scum."

"Let's make your little speech your last words." Garth lunged at Scar in the moment he lunged at Garth. Both wolves could feel the other one's claws and teeth tearing into his flesh. Garth and Scar felt their opponent's blood spray onto their faces.

Scar yelped loudly when he felt Garth bury his teeth into his throat. Claws began screaming as she watched Garth's teeth sink deeper and deeper into her mate's neck. Blood was spraying everywhere and she could do nothing to help Scar because of his injuries, while was the others did not have a chance to react before it was too late. Claws no longer cared about the argument she had had with Scar. She no longer cared that Scar had called her a disease-ridden whore. Claws was now watching her mate get killed and it was now too late for anyone to save Scar. Garth released his jaws' grip on Scar's throat and tossed the dying wolf over to where his defenseless mate lay on her side, bleeding.

"Scar!" Claws wailed. "You can't die! We just found each other again!"

"I-I-I'm…sorry…" Scar gurgled as blood gushed from his ripped-open throat and from his mouth as a result of him speaking. And then he died. Scar's head fell against Claws' paws.

Claws, after screaming and crying her eyes out over Scar's death, changed immediately. She no longer felt her grief but only a burning hate deep in her heart. "If I wasn't hurt, I would come over there, get my teeth buried into your worthless fucking throat and bite so deep into your flesh that your fucking GREAT GRANDFATHER WILL FEEL IT IN HIS GRAVE!"

"You're used to things being deep in throats, aren't you, Claws? Especially when it is a rogue wolf's dick in yours. Yes, I know about this 'Rider.' It's not easy to keep me from figuring things out. I know why you were gone for so long back then."

"You disrespectful son of a bitch!" Claws roared.

"You can join your mate in death," Garth threatened her. He had intended to lunge at the defenseless wolf but Kate did not give Garth the chance. She tackled Garth, head butting him in the ribs, and sending him reeling into the hot sand.

Garth went mad immediately. Barking like a wolf possessed, he ran straight for Humphrey in a dead run before even Kate had a chance to stop him from getting around her. Everyone screamed when they heard and saw Garth's claws rip into the flesh on Humphrey's chest. The gray wolf collapsed into a bleeding heap, even if the wound was not as serious as Garth or anyone else thought it was, as Garth towered over him. Garth was about to tear Humphrey's throat wide open, just as he had done to Scar, with his fangs. But then it happened.

It began with Kate screaming, "NO! Humphrey!"

Then Stinky screaming, "DAD!" And he let out an almost hellish snarl before attacking his own uncle. Stinky did not give Garth a chance to wound his father anymore. Garth felt his nephew's teeth bury into his throat. A loud ripping sound followed quickly as Stinky's fangs slashed through his uncle's throat.

Now, it was Garth who collapsed, spitting up blood as his throat gushed the red fluid. Stinky closed in on his uncle, ready to rip Garth's throat out for what all he had done.

"Let me finish him off," Kate said in an almost murderous tone. "He hurt my mate twice, made my sister rape Humphrey, and murdered my sister for seeing what she did wrong. And now he has hurt Claws, and killed Scar. I have been waiting so long to do this to him…" Kate put her muzzle up to Garth's ear, lifted it up, and then whispered, "Go to Hell and never both any of us again."

Kate buried her fangs into Garth's throat then finished what Stinky had started before Garth could speak. She ripped Garth's throat out and tossed it aside like Garth, sending droplets of blood through the air with the ragged chunk of flesh. After that, Kate immediately went to Humphrey, who was, thankfully, only lightly wounded, despite what everyone had thought at first. Claudette (who had not had the chance to leave because of Garth's sudden appearance) had been licking her father's wounds while Princess and Terra had been licking Claws' wounds. They would both live, regardless of their injuries inflicted by Garth.

"I'm so sorry, Humphrey," Kate sobbed.

"What?" Humphrey gasped. "For what?"

"I-I once said that I wished you were dead," she explained. "A-And it almost happened to you three times. I didn't mean that, but I still feel horrible about saying it…"

"You don't need to feel that way," Humphrey assured her. The jackals, the zombies, and Garth are all gone. We have nothing to worry about now. We just need to head back to the oasis and rest. Just rest and nothing else…"

"…except for grieve," Claws sobbed. "He took Scar from me…"

"Yes, and grieve," Princess said. "We may all still be alive, but we also all lost so many who were close to us. There are no more dangers, so we can finally go on with our lives peacefully. And we can finally mourn those who aren't here to celebrate the pace we have finally found after so long."


	28. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

"Will we ever get to see Jasper again, Mommy?" one of the six puppies asked Princess.

"I don't know, daughter," Princess replied. "But we can all hope that something else good will happen to us. Things have been looking up for us recently."

Princess longed, so badly, to return to Jasper Park, her and so many others' birthplace. All of these survivors were beginning to tire of their life in the desert, even if it was finally safe for them all. The zombies and jackals were all gone, and so was Garth. But the wolves could not stand to call the Sahara Desert home any longer. Too many of them had died here and they wanted to get back to Jasper. All of the survivors were positive that the zombie threat in Jasper had been eradicated like it had been here.

Claws had been on a look out for another airplane. Not one that was coming to Africa but one that was leaving the continent. An airplane would be their only potential way out of the Sahara Desert and back to Jasper. There was no way any car or truck could get across this desert to the coastline, and then the ocean would be a problem for land vehicles as well. In addition to that, the oasis was nowhere near the coast, so that meant boats were out of the question. The wolves refused to do any more travel across this desert as they had no idea if they would find any places to live if one of them got hurt on the journey to the coastline.

"Do you see or hear any airplanes yet, Claws?" Kate asked the wolf who was perched on a nearby boulder with a flat top to it. Humphrey was by the side of his one-month pregnant mate. It had been just over a month since Garth was finally killed, something that had happened only days before Kate had decided to get pregnant for the second time. She had been in heat then, so they had taken the chance to have more pups now that it was safe to do so.

"Not yet," Claws said. "I haven't heard a single one since that one crashed into this desert with us in it. I have my doubts that we'll ever find a chance to get back to Jasper. We may have to call this desert home for the rest of our lives."

"Try to stay optimistic, Claws," Cleopatra told the wolf who was now a good friend of the secretary bird. Claws and Cleopatra's friendship had begun after the secretary bird had found Claws wandering all alone in the desert after she had fled the jackal's territory. "An airplane is bound to show up and be leaving the desert soon. I feel it in my gut."

"If it does show up, will you come with us?" Claudette asked. "We've been through a lot together and you have nothing left to stick around for now."

"I have my new mate," Cleopatra argued, due to being a bit offended by that statement. He was by her side. "He's all I need to get buy until the two of us decide to start a family." She noticed how all of the wolves were looking at her and knew what was on their minds right away. So she gave in. "But…if an airplane does ever arrive, the two of us will come with you wolves."

"Really?" Claws almost gasped.

"Yes," the male secretary bird said.

Claws' ears shock straight up suddenly. She heard a loud noise, a sort of roaring sound, not too far away from the oasis. It was what she had been listening for the past month.

"Airplane!?" Claws shouted with joy. "I hear an airplane and it's not that far away from here! We must hurry, though. It sounds as if the airplane is about to leave."

The wolves took off immediately, without saying a single word to each other. Each of the six pups was being carried in the jaws of the adults. Cleopatra and her mate flew after the group of sprinting wolves, casting massive shadows over them as they headed for the sound of the airplane.

The airplane was much closer than any of them had expected. It was only a few meters away from the edge of the oasis. And the best part was that the cargo hold was still open. The pilot seemed to be busy talking to another human, on his radio, about returning to Jasper Park. That told the wolves that this would probably be their only chance to return home. As they filed into the cargo plane, they could hear someone on the radio telling the pilot about how there were no longer any zombies in Jasper, and that it was safe to return to the park.

"Oh," Kate almost moaned with relief. "Not only will we get to return to Jasper, but we'll be returning to it and not have to working about the zombies there!"

"We're going home," Princess said to her children. "We're finally going home!"

* * *

The airplane finally arrived in Jasper Park a few days later. The pilot had been shocked to see a group of wolves rush out of his airplane, with two secretary birds, when he went to the back to unload his cargo.

As the wolves ran across the field, heading for the Western Territory, they thought about how Jasper looked as it had before the outbreak yet it looked so different at the same time. There were no living animals running about and no wolf puppies playing in the field. They wondered if they were the only survivors of the outbreak as they headed for their territory to reclaim it. But there were no zombies, no dead bodies, and not even a single sign of there ever having been a zombie outbreak, other than the lack of life in the area, beyond the plants that grew here.

But they soon came across a hopeful sign when they were greeted by three wolves, whom they had thought were dead, sometime later. From left to right—Daria, her sister Lois, and her mate Nars. Daria was clearly pregnant and Nars had to be the father, the group assumed.

"It's good to see you all again," Daria said. "Well, to hear and smell you all again, in my case." Daria was born blind and driven from her birthplace for that reason. And her mother had been killed for protecting her.

"How did you survive?" Princess asked. "Runt said he saw you die just before he lost his life…"

"My sister and Nars saved my life at the last moment," Daria explained. "Runt just ran off before it happened. But I don't blame him. I, too, thought I would've died then. And I almost had. Now come. There are more wolves than just the three of us waiting back in the Western Territory to learn that some of you are still alive, and in Jasper again, after what happened just over two months ago. I'll be expecting to hear more bad news," Daria said sadly, due to just learning that Runt had died, "but we have a lot of catching up to do…"


End file.
